Sawatch

It snowed most of the day with 3" of new snow on the truck from 10 am to 4 pm. Winds weren't bad near and below treeline with minimal snow transport. Above treeline winds were strong and transporting snow.

By the time I finished, the storm total near the highway was 11" with about 1.1" of snow water equivalent. Below treeline, the new snow settled into about an 8" (20 cm) slab. The slab was still soft and generally unsupportable while skinning uphill, making for trapdoor conditions. I found these conditions all the way up 11,800 to 11,900 ft (NTL). In one snowpit on a north-facing slope at 11,300 (BTL), where the snow was more wind-affected, I got a result of ECTP6 in an Extended Column Test. Not until I got above 12,000 feet was the snowpack supportable to skis. As soon as I experienced supportable conditions, I got several loud collapses. The snowpack structure is more complex and layered and not just the simple new snow on facets like at the lower elevations. The snowpack with hard slabs formed during late January light snowfall and wind events, cap soft faceted layers. This snowpack is nearly identical to what I saw at Loveland Pass a few days ago. In this area, even the dirty crust, near the bottom of the snowpack, that was previously knife hard, and formed during the December 17 wind event, has softened, with softer facets above and below this crust. I expected to find a much more talkative, touchy snowpack than I did today, especially with an inch of water. It's a tale of two snowpacks with a weak, entirely faceted snowpack at low elevations capped by new snow, which doesn't have a strong enough slab yet. And a much more dangerous snowpack that is able to handle a large load, and is likely less talkative because it is already becoming hard to impact the layers between the stacks of slabs. This latter snowpack can produce large, and deadly avalanches.