Northern San Juan

Avalanche

Jeff Dobronyi · Apr 1, 2017 · Northern San Juan

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Weather

Skies varied from scattered to obscured all day. When the sun was out, it was hot. Short burst of S2 around 1300h, and currently S1 and obscured at 1800h. Winds were light near treeline, mostly from N and NE.

Snowpack

HN ~15cm over significant dust deposit at 0330 interface. 50-60cm snow since 0323. We observed good stability in the recent snow, no signs of instability, no problem interfaces present and no slab avalanches observed.

Avalanche

We triggered some small D1 loose dry avalanches yesterday 0331 on NW and N aspects below treeline. Even as low as 11,000', the new snow was heavy and moist, which allowed slow moving loose dry snow to sluff surprisingly far. Today 0401, we awoke to very dry HN on the surface and little cohesion. Some loose dry avalanches were observed on all aspects in steep terrain and below cliffs. We observed some old debris, possibly that ran the night of 0331, D2 below NE facing terrain in the Senator Beck drainage. The same slope was skied this morning with no results. We heard reports of tracks in Hollywood, Champion, and Serpentine with no reports of slab avalanches.