Lake Serene

After receiving a small amount of snow last night, I hiked up to Lake Serene to investigate the new snow and search for old avalanche debris piles from the large rain event last week. I saw many shallow, small new sluffs, I suspect both dry and moist, as sun hit the steep, rocky cliffs of Mt Index. They all ran in the new snow layer, which was 6-8" deep above 2000ft, and remained small.  Given the extreme terrain, I only saw the debris piles in the fans beneath the cliffs, and am unclear exactly where they originated. I saw a few old large debris piles thousands of feet below the large crown near the summit of Mt Index, at the far end of the lake. 

It sure feels like spring right now. It was cold and wintery at the lake in the shade, but below 2000ft, snow was rapidly dripping and melting, and the sun felt warm. 

A couple inches of snow from elevations just below the trailhead rapidly increased in depth at just over 2000ft to 6-8 inches. The snow was light, cold, and dry. At about 2300ft, I began noticing patches of old snow beneath the new layer, which varied up to a foot or so deep. The old snow was moist, soft, large-grained melt forms, and the layers were well bonded together. 

The new low density snow had no slablike qualities, and I could only produce very small dry sluffs on steep slopes. No wind transport was visible, even up towards the summit of Mt Index, far above me. 

The spring sun is intense- any steep slopes facing the sun quickly sluffed with damp snow. It also felt very warm, as opposed to feeling frigid by the Lake, even just at 2500ft, in the shade.