Hiked up James Peak to get one last look at the snowpack before this week’s storm.

Generally found 6-12” of total snow above 8000’ on the shady aspects. All aspects that face the southern half of the compass, including West aspects, were generally bare dirt, all the way to the peak.

The snowpack structure was similar to what I found near Mt. Ogden a week ago. Facets on the ground, with a decomposing crust above. Then weaker facets in the upper half capped by a surface crust. There’s a nice crop of surface hoar on top.

Photos below of surface hoar and sunny aspects of James Peak.

Short video below of what I feel is a representative snapshot of the upper elevation snowpack.

I also turned the camera lens Westward and tried to document the pre-storm snow cover around Ben Lomond. Unfortunately, the small shot of snow on 11/20 covered the bare dirt and made it hard to see the old snowcover boundaries. If you look closely, you can see the smooth areas that retained deeper (and weak) snow from October. Of interest to me was the Easterly slopes below the 8000’ point on Rodeo ridge and also the Birthday Bowls appeared to be free of old snow. In general, Ben Lomond appeared a little bit snowier than the terrain I observed near James Peak.