Front Range

Snowy most of the day and very cold with strong winds.

Initially, we went up to a westerly-facing near-treeline slope. On this aspect, there was about 80cm of snow. The top half was storm snow resting on facets over a strong Melt-Freeze Crust. On a hand shear test, there was no slab formation, and the facets were well bonded to the crust below. The only issue I could see on this aspect is a small Loose Dry avalanche problem in steep terrain. Above treeline, westerlies are still very bare-looking, having been scoured by the wind. Northeasterly slopes varied significantly with elevation. Above treeline there was about 120cm of snow on average. The surface snow was a 5cm-thick developing wind slab with about 15cm of soft storm snow below. Under this, there was a pencil-hard slab about 20cm thick with facets beneath. In tests, the upper 5cm wind slab easily slid off, but there was no reactivity on the facets beneath the stout crust. This seemed like a classic low likelihood, high-consequence persistent slab avalanche setup for this area. By contrast, Near Treeline and Below Treeline were generally very weak, but there was not much slab to connect the terrain, and I did not get any propagation in tests. This was the elevation where we were able to stomp a small wind lip and get the surface to break, but it appears we need more slab at this elevation to connect slopes for larger avalanches.