Aspen
SnowpackColin Mitchell · Dec 21, 2015 · Aspen
Weather
Mostly cloudy with a few patches of blue, and intermittent light snow showers. Moderate westerly winds were blowing snow from the trees, and moving a little snow on the surface.
Snowpack
Snowpack still lacks much in the way of structure or cohesion. Foot pen is basically to the ground. Snows that have fallen since the 11th have settled into a slab around 45 cm thick, but still not very strong (4F-1F). This sits on top of several layers of rounding facets from earlier this season. These layers are consolidating slowly as well, and we don't have the dramatic hardness mismatch we associate with easily triggered avalanches. The 12/11 interface has a thin layer of F hard facets, but there is not a solid bed surface, and little slab, so pretty marginal results with tests. The exception was the PST, but this is to be expected with these conditions. Notable wind-loading and drifting in the BTL terrain near the pass. Wind-exposed areas showed lot's of previous loading, including small cornices around terrain features. Unusual for this area. Still little sign of loading in the bowl proper.