Front Range

A small natural shed cycle was observed, mostly near treeline on easterly-facing slopes.

The day started with overcast skies. Though temperatures were warm, the cloud cover limited wet activity in the morning. The sun made in appearance late morning, making wet avalanches easy to trigger.

Below treeline, the snowpack is composed of just the most recent storm snow, which is now about 8 to 12 inches at lower elevations. I was able to skin from the truck, though this will not last much longer. The upper snowpack is wet, but still supportable. Skiing down through north-facing trees in the afternoon, it wasn't fun, but I didn't get much rollerballing or pinwheeling. Near treeline I found 14 to 18 inches of settled storm snow on northerly slopes from the most recent large storm. At the upper end of NTL, on due north-facing slopes, this snow was completely dry. At the same elevation, northeast-facing, non-rocky slopes would rollerball, but avalanches were unlikely. In the middle of the near treeline elevation band, right around 11,000 feet is where I found the most unstable wet snow. Steep and rocky, east and northeast-facing slopes had already experienced avalanches naturally (nothing bigger than D1). And it was easy to push snow and trigger wet avalanches on slopes that were over about 38 degrees in steepness. Although these weren't big avalanches, they were freight-train-like, and it would be hard to ski out of. On east-facing slopes, the settled storm snow, which is now moist to wet, was about 8 to 12 inches deep.