Snoqualmie Pass

Cold temperatures and increasing clouds will help keep the snowpack “locked up” and avalanche concerns at a minimum. Variable travel, especially at lower elevations and in the trees, poses your greatest risks. Give yourself time to deal with the rugged snow surface conditions. 

Not much will change at Snoqualmie Pass on Monday. Anything that softened in Sunday’s sunshine will quickly freeze overnight. Easterly winds will make it downright frigid to start the day. Brrr! Bundle up at the trailheads. 

While it may be sunny to start, increasing clouds should put an end to any chance of crusty snow surfaces softening. Instead, you’ll be left with a mixed bag of conditions. If you really go hunting amongst the higher peaks and steep dark north faces, you might find a tiny wind drifted pillow that could fail above the 1/10 crust, but that’s about the extent of the avalanche concerns. 

Instead, travel conditions continue to garner all the attention. Out in the open, surfaces are generally smooth but highly variable. Pockets of softer snow intermingle with breakable crusts and icy slopes. The problem is getting there. Travel at lower elevations is rugged, to say the least. Tree bombs, ice blocks, and tracks combine into a frozen coral reef. Then there are the open creeks, random holes, and avalanche debris. Don’t be in a rush through these potentially dangerous travel conditions. 

At the moment, we aren’t concerned about any lingering layers in the snowpack. We’re focused on areas of softer snow over the extremely stout 1/10 crust. One rider on Saturday described this beefy layer as snowmobile supportable. That's impressively strong! Reports of widespread surface hoar continue to pour in. Additionally, the soft snow over the crust shows signs of faceting. We’ll keep an eye on all these weak surfaces as we await the next storm.