Northern San Juan
SnowpackChris Dickson · Jan 20, 2021 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Intermittent clouds swirled around midday with a brief moment of S-1 snow showers. At the end of the tour, the clouds had burned off and blue skies prevailed. Calm to light winds, but no wind transport was observed.
Snowpack
Below treeline snowpack in this area is largely faceted out without a cohesive slab. The exception to this rule was where we found older 10cm thick wind slabs in open, unprotected terrain near the valley floor. As we toured up towards treeline, the facet farm conditions persisted. Near treeline, the impact of the wind in our pit site was obvious as we found much more dense snow in our mid pack at 11,000’ on a E/NE aspect. We found 130cm of snow in our pit, with a right-side up layering of weaker snow over strong snow with 4F and 1F hardness in our mid pack. Our CT resulted in moderate SP fractures on a 5 cm thick wind slab sandwiched between facets approx. 30cm down and also on the 12/11 PWL but we did not propagating results in our ECT on either of those interfaces.