Buck
Quick report
We observed the whole gambit. Shoe walking on dry trail on the S fork, snowy patches on the N fork trail. Shallow snowpack, dust on crust, water openings, old wind slabs and deep drifted snow. Up higher we had to navigate rocky patches to get to the large snowy panels on the way up. Moistening snow but never to the point of pinwheels even in slightly steeper terrain. Rocks are starting to poke out more and make travel a bit tricker even at high elevation. We observed dry winter-y snow, wind scoured areas with icy patches up high and down low, enough winter-y snow where dry loose sluffing was something we had to manage. Overall the N's were skiing great, however by today I'm assuming there will be a crust on anything below 11,000ft. S's there will certainly be a crust on anything even up to 12,700ft. We were above 10,000ft by 9:30am and after that the snow was taking longer to soften and become wet. Despite the warmer temps and sun, we did not see any signs of instability until descending the N side and noted rollerballs and pinwheels off of W facing, steep rocky terrain.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Recent Snowfall
- 3
Warm and clear skies with little winds. Could have really used more of those Sierras winds in that drainage to help offset the spring touring temps.
Snowpack
Snow line was at 8,900ft. It was cold in the morning but warmed up quickly with the sun. Above 10,000ft though the snow was not wetting out as quickly. We encountered minimal new snow (up to 4cm) from the 4/13 afternoon convective storm. This sat over the old snow from 4/11-4/12. All of this sat over the old MFcr that was anywhere from 60cm down in the deepest wind drifted areas, to 5 cm or 0cm in other wind exposed areas. I noticed that there was old, previously buried wind slab sitting above the MFcr and that the interfacing of this and the new snow was less resistant to hand shears than the MFcr interface. Southerlies were very moist even at 12,700ft on the S aspect, but the N aspect at the same elevation was dry wintery snow until about 11,300ft. Even after that the snow was moist but skied well in panels where it has been drifted, in between areas where it has been scoured and was icy.