Icicle Creek Drainage

We took advantage of the great weather to get further into the mountains and reset our knowledge of the snowpack after the recent warm storms, inversions, and sunshine. We found more good views than good skiing. Evidence of warmer temperatures at higher elevations was widespread. No trees had snow left on their branches up to ridgelines, and rollerballs peppered all aspects and elevations. The softest snow surfaces were in the valleys, where temperatures stayed cold. 

At mid and upper elevations, variable surfaces of all kinds existed, from breakable freezing rain crust at mid-elevations to not quite supportable wind board at upper elevations. We experienced minimal signs of instability and other than one large avalanche, most natural avalanches were small. Even in large, complex alpine terrain, there was a lack of large crowns.

A firm wind crust would occasionally produce localized cracking beneath our skis. But other than that, we saw no signs of instability.

The snowpack still seems thin for January in the Icicle Creek area. 

We found 70-80cm of snow below 4000ft. These lower elevations stayed cold beneath the inversion, and the surface is a very thin zipper crust with occasional surface hoar. The top 30cm of snow is soft and beginning to weaken and facet.

Starting at 4600ft, a breakable freezing rain crust is topping the recent soft snow below. The snow surfaces were extremely variable. It seems at more sheltered locations where the surface was soft, but textured, this crust was dappled and easy to travel through. However, where it fell on stiff, smooth, wind-pressed surfaces, it formed a more uniform crust that made travel challenging. This crust existed until about 6400ft. Above that, snow surfaces were still variable, just due to wind instead of freezing rain. A stout, mostly supportable wind crust from 5-20cm thick existed on the surface up to the ridge at 7000ft. 

We dug a snow profile at 6000ft and found just 130cm of snow. The surface was a 0.5cm thick freezing rain crust over 20cm of recent snow. At this interface, I identified some small, faceted grains that produced sudden planar results in small column tests (CT23 SP). An Extended Column Test produced non-propagating results on this layer (ECTN 22). Below the recent snow, the midpack is primarily consolidated, small rounded grains. However, I did identify another layer of faceted snow down 40cm that produced no results in stability tests. The Solstice Crust is buried 70cm deep and presents as a series of crusts 15cm thick. Below the Solstice Crust is a mixture of faceted grains and melt forms of variable hardness.

We poked out onto a south face at 7000ft. The surface snow was becoming moist at 2 pm, and temperatures seemed just cool enough to prevent the snow from becoming wet and punchy.