Front Range

Cold and blowing snow initially from the east but switching to the southwest by the end of the day.

Below treeline, the snowpack is very weak with little structure and needs to build a slab before there will be much of a problem. I could potentially envision a Loose Dry issue at this elevation on steep slopes, so be aware of terrain traps. Above treeline on a slope that faced east, southeast, and south, the snow height varied from about 70cm to 180cm in more drifted areas. On the southeast and south aspects, there is a thick, impenetrable ice layer buried at depths of 60 to 80 cm. I cannot imagine anything penetrating this layer. Close to the surface, there are two layers of facets, recently buried by wind events. The higher one is buried about 5 cm deep, and the slab on top is very thin and not really strong enough to propagate a fracture. As loading continues, this layer will thicken and is most likely to slide this weekend. A far scarier weak layer is the one buried last weekend about 35 cm deep under a pencil-hard slab. This layer will be harder to trigger, but if it does initiate, the resulting avalanche will be large and connected. Weak-slope areas, or if a higher avalanche steps down, seem like the most likely scenarios for triggering an avalanche on this layer.