Northern San Juan
AvalancheColin Mitchell · Mar 30, 2018 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Cold, sunny morning, with rapidly warming temperatures.
Snowpack
A real mixed bag. Micro aspect changes from south to north in the same gully had very different snowpacks. More southerly facing terrain was patchy, re-frozen melt forms to the ground with a thick crust at the surface. More northerly facing shaded terrain was all facets 4F-F hard. Westerlies were in between, with several thick melt-freeze crusts in the upper pack, and an ice mass down about 30 cm, formed from water percolating through the snowpack. Perc columns were plentiful below this crust and went all the way to the ground. Large wet slabs unlikely due to lack of a slab. There may be a few old windslabs buried up in the gullies, but these are unlikely to produce a slide big enough to reach the road. There is plenty of uncohesive snow to produce loose wet slides though, especially in the lower-angled forested terrain in the middle of the paths, and deep in the gullies. The steep, prominent rocky terrain between the gullies is mostly bare at this point, or holding just a few inches of snow. The most likely scenario here is that the snow will quietly melt away, but there is still a legitimate threat to the highway from larger loose wet slides under the right conditions.
Avalanche
No new activity observed