No such thing as too much snow

After a failed attempt to drive south towards Mammoth this morning, my plan B was to get out close to home and tour from the June Lake Loop. My goals were to confirm or deny a storm slab problem, test some small slopes for winds slabs, and maybe even make a few turns. I was successful in one out of the three.

Upon leaving the car at 7800 ft, I found difficult travel and 60-80cm of new snow on bare ground. I battled my way uphill at a painfully slow pace and found myself pulling my legs up out of the snow with my hands at times. Storm instabilities were easy to find at several interfaces any time I sheared new snow with my hand or cut the uphill side of a bank or skin track. These manifested as touchy, shooting cracks from my gloves, poles and skis. I did not get high enough to test for wind slabs but feel pretty darn certain that they are up there.

 With the high hazard, my plan was to stick to slopes below 35 degrees. The crux of that plan was that slopes less than 35 degrees were quite simply un-skiable. In two hours, I climbed a laughable 750 vertical feet, and topped out at 8500 ft where I measured a consistent 115cm of new snow (almost 4 feet). I trenched four ridiculous turns, and then promptly followed my skin track back to the car, mostly walking downhill in ski mode.

Happy Holidays and be safe out there

Easy to initiate storm slabs on several interfaces on any cutbank or roll

Up to 115cm of new snow on bare ground at 8500 feet. Snow was dense and more or less right side up.

With over a meter of new snow in a short amount of time and ongoing high snowfall intensities, storm slab instabilities were easy to find and initiate even though I didn’t get on terrain steeper than 35 degrees or above 8500 feet.