I found 9-10" of settled snow from this past week's storms, generally well bonded to old crusts that developed during the warmup. My goal was to see how much the warmup affected the snowpack, especially in shadier lower-elevation areas. I dug two pits on the northwestern flanks of Dolores Mountain, one in the shade and one in the sun. Snow depths were respectable for this shallower area of the Southern Mountains (165cm in shade at 10,000' and 146cm in the sun at 10,400').

No approval yet please, still need to add Snowpilots...

Rico area

Dolores Mountain

Interestingly, the lower elevation shaded pit was composed of completely dry faceted snow grains, with well developed depth hoar making up the bottom 80cm of the snowpack. In an extended column test, I got the cash-register failure and propagation on the 17th tap where the slab formed by more recent snowfall sits above the very weak depth hoar. In the sunny pit, it couldn't have looked more different, with a 35cm thick melt-freeze crust making up the top of the pack. Here, on a sunny west-facing slope, there were no results in tests and the snow grains were moist all the way to the ground. Generally, this summarizes the current state of affairs across the region: sunny slopes are almost transitioned into their Spring form (minus the fresh snow on top), while cold shady snowpacks lurk in the shade with well-preserved persistent weak layers.

A sunny morning gave way to partly cloudy skies and then snow flurries around midday. Temps were cold throughout, staying well below freezing.