Front Range
Quick reportLuke Robinson · Jan 31, 2026 · Sawatch
Weather
Warm down low at the car, just below freezing, getting progressively colder as I went up in altitude. Wind was calm until reaching the continental divide at which there was a strong wind coming from the NNW.
Snowpack
The snowpack below about 11,000ft was mostly faceted and soft, with the occasional small solar crust in sun exposed areas. Above 11,000ft until treeline the snowpack alternated between a facet wallow where I was sinking to my boot tops on skins and areas where there was softer surface snow on top of buried harder layers. It was pretty common for the snowpack to sound hollow in these areas and I would occasionally break through under ski to the harder layer below but I did not find any major signs of instability. In the one spot that I got collapsing, I dug a pit I found a buried 3cm thick Ice layer with a soft facet layer above that was likely the cause of the collapse. I struggled to find this Ice/facet layer repeated in similar terrain. Above treeline and the snow was almost all wind affected, with west to north facing terrain mostly wind scoured bare. Most of the terrain that was SE facing had a thin layer of snow (<6") that was either hardened wind board or soft facets with deeper snow concentrated in SE terrain below ridgelines and in cross loaded gully features that I did not get the chance to explore.
Avalanche
From Georgia Pass out in the distance I could see an avalanche that had run on the south face of the peak east of Keystone resort's Outback Express Summit. The avalanche was a long ways away so I did not have much detail on the path, but the avalanche debris field and crown were visible. Photo will be in the media section