Sawatch

Clear, sunny, and unseasonably warm. The air temperature at the trailhead was 40°F at noon.

The snowfall in this area is well below normal, ~47% of normal. The current snowpack structure is very weak, consisting of three layers of faceted crystals of varying hardness, but there is no slab to speak of. I found no surface crust on the north and east-facing terrain where I was collecting observations. A thin (1cm) melt-freeze crust was present on some of the southeast-facing terrain that I skied across.