Quick report
We walked up to the Aeneas Ridge weather station for a pre-season welfare check. The sunny weather allowed us a quick survey of snow cover.
- A storm early this week dropped about 1-4" of snow at mid and upper elevations.
- The thin snow cover melted off many sun-exposed slopes on the west side of the crest by late afternoon.
- High, shaded slopes are still holding snow. It's not enough, however, to bury scree, logs, talus, or bear grass.
- Through binoculars, it seemed conditions were similar on the Flatehead Range.
- Any avalanche problems that exist are small and isolated.
Current conditions were not enough to dissuade one skier from skiing down the first few switchbacks of the trail below the ridge.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 30
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 7
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
This week's snow line was about 5900 feet. Total accumulations seemed to be less than 10 cm. Snow was visible on solar slopes midday, but had melted/ ablated by mid to late afternoon.
Snowpack
Maybe 10 cm of recent snow that's settled since Tuesday. Clouds the past few days left rime on the surface. After today's weather, the snow on the ground is moist/ wet. We didn't venture onto shaded slopes. From our vantage, we saw nowhere that accumulations exceeded surface roughess.
Avalanche
We saw no recent avalanches when we glassed the large, open bowls of the Flathead Range.