Front Range

Clear, sunny, temps in the low teens, light wind coming from the west

In near treeline terrain the snowpack was a mix of mostly faceted snow when the snowpack was relatively shallow (30-40cm) and deeper areas (50-80cm) where you could find a hard slab (5-10cm thick) on top of facets typically located 10-25cm beneath the surface snow. There was a lot of variability in snow depth and the deeper areas with the hard over weak structure often appeared and disappeared within just a few steps of mostly faceted snowpack. This snowpack structure was mostly on NE to SE facing terrain, with north facing terrain being mostly faceted and south to west facing terrain was often very shallow or wind scoured bare. In above treeline terrain in the features where snow was found it followed a pattern of hard slabs over weaker near ground facets. Thinner areas this was often just one slab on the surface varying from 1cm thick wind skin to up to 8cm thick and supportable. Where the snowpack was deeper it was a often a stack of hard slabs, sometimes up to 60cm think, over a weak near ground facet layer. Some of these slabs had buried surface facets between them but I could only get these to react in informal pit tests and there was no evidence of them being reactive.