Sangre de Cristo
SnowpackJeremy Primmer · Feb 12, 2022 · Sangre de Cristo
Weather
Weather started of spring like with t-shirt temperatures. The temperatures dropped significantly around 3 and winds picked up.
Snowpack
We had very warm temperatures at the trailhead, and snow was globbing to our skis. Below treeline, we found a supportable snowpack from the recent snow but no buried weak layers. Surface faceting was just starting on northerly slopes. Near the treeline, the snowpack was more faceted. Sotherly, slopes had a supportable melt-freeze crust in the morning and a very wet surface in the afternoon. The northwest-facing slopes near treeline and above were scoured other than cross-loaded features. We saw a small collection of D1 wind slabs that failed above treeline on easterly facing slopes. On northerly and easterly facing slopes, we found snow height of 100-250cm with a poor structure. We found soft 1mm buried facets from the snow surface before the February 2nd storm. This layer was propagating with hard force in ECTs. A thin met-freeze crust capped it in some locations, and the facets were larger and more reactive than in locations where wind slabs covered it. There were large avalanches in both of the large east-facing paths that most likely ran on 2/3/2022 and probably indicated widespread activity during this cycle across the range.