Front Range

West winds moderate and cold.

Below treeline there is about 70 to 90cm of snow. This is mostly fist hard and was easy to push a poles through to the ground. Although I didn't experience any Loose Dry avalanches I could see these occuring in steep rocky terrain. Near and Above Treeline on north- and east-facing aspects, the snow surface and structure were highly variable, and the skiing was terrible. Soft surfaces interspersed with thick, dense crusts. Lower snowpack structure was generally all dense layers and the facets that had formed at the ground were all 1 finger hard or firmer and I did not get any reactivity on deeper layers even when I tried to Deep Tap Test them. The surface wind slab layer was concerning. It was pencil hard and Extended Column Tests failed on isolation or very easily on a layer of defragmenting snow grains. On these aspects the snow depth was variable as always with weaker faceted snow close to rocks along the edges of slopes, quickly changing to depth of over 1.5 meters.