Grand Mesa

Snowpack

Rick (Grumpy) Smith · Dec 23, 2015 · Grand Mesa

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Weather

At 0800 , -9.4 c, winds from SW @ 3-6 mph , 70% cloud cover

Snowpack

I was able to do an ECT this AM (8:00) on the east side of Powderhorn in an open area adjacent to the east boundary. Lat. 039.0622 / Lon. 108.1409, Elev. 9220’ . The slope was facing NNE (040*) and the slope angle was at 30* Outside air temp. was -9.4 and winds were from the SW around 3-6 mph, with about 70% cloud cover. Coming into this site there was a great deal of snow drift and wind slab from the previous day. There was about a 5cm crust with 5cm of new snow on top of the crust. The pit was 105 cm deep, the upper 10 cm was an easy fist, the next layer (95-85 cm) was a hard pencil. The next layer (5cm) was one finger followed by a HS from 80cm down to 10cm (pencil/knife). The bottom layer, 10cm to ground was a hard 4 fingers. Tap test showed a failure at 8 of the upper layer (95-85cm) onto the the HS. The rest of the tap test was unremarkable (no failure). A couple of temps. through the snow pack showed -3.4 c @ 85 cm, -2.1 @ 65 cm and -0.9 @ 35 cm. I got on my skies and tried to get the upper layer (95-85cm) to slide, but was unable to get an significant movement. Skiing down I tried to break trough the upper crust, but, once again was unable to.