Northern San Juan

Old avalanche around Dry Gluch that ran during the last storm cycle

A sensational day in the San Juan Backcountry. The only problem was that it was downright hot by 11 AM. There was very little wind to speak of, even at ridgelines above 12,000 ft.

Most of the slopes we traveled on today had about 1 meter (3ft) of snow on them. The deepest place we probed was 125cm, surprisingly on a south-facing slope above treeline. The storm that ended on February 20 left 30-40 inches of snow, but last week's warm weather compacted that snow into a slab about a foot to a foot and a half thick. This new slab rests on facets that formed during our dry spell in early February. We are also seeing that this slab is about 1F hard on the Hand Hardness Scale, which is now connecting many previously patchy slopes. It is hard to tell where you might be able to trigger an avalanche because many of the shallower portions are now covered up. In all of our snowpits we dug today, we got medium propagating results (hits from the elbows) about a foot or so down from the surface, right under the slab. The snowpack on north and east-facing slopes was entirely dry, with no signs of the drizzle reported in Silverton early last week or of surface warming. While the south had several signs of meltwater moving through the snowpack, including water pooling at a melt-freeze crust about a foot from the surface, which topped a facet layer; that facet layer had percolation tubes in it as well, but was still mostly dry.