Northern San Juan

Small loose avalanche on a steep, rocky, sunny slope in the Chattanooga area.

Nice day. Lots of sunshine, light wind, mild temperatures.

The snow for the weekend continues to settle but remains fist hard. The new snow sits over crusts, stiff old windboard, and near-surface facets near and above treeline, as well as well-developed bottomless facets and depth hoar in shady, protected slopes below treeline. With cold and clear nights, the new snow is faceting quickly. Digging on an east aspect just under 12,000 feet, I observed a very weak faceted layer at the new/old (January 23) interface. This layer is likely a combination of buried near-surface facets that developed prior to this weekend's storm and the new low-density snow faceting above the harder old windboard. Below the firm 1-finger mid-pack layer, a combination of facets and depth hoar with a hand hardness of 4-finger just below the old wind layer transitioning to 4-finger minus. Compression test produced hard results that failed on the ground, while two Extended Column tests broke under the shovel and did not propagate on hits 25 (test 1) and 27 (test 2). The sun looked to be warming the snow on steep, rocky sunny slopes in the alpine, as limited rollerballs and one loose slide were observed by 2pm.