Quick report
We decided to take a trip to Mount Rainier today in search of lingering wind slabs and increasing wet avalanche activity. It appears we weren't the only ones to take advantage of the weather; it was busy out there! The clear, sunny conditions made it easy for us to find wet, loose avalanche activity. As we walked up toward Panorama Point, we could see multiple fresh avalanches on sunny slopes. As the day heated up, the problem turned front and center, and it was easy to trigger long-running, wet loose slides on steep convexities. Above 7,000 feet, wind-textured snow and some hollow slabs were noted while walking, but no recent activity was found.
Any instability we found was due to the warming surface snow. Giant roller balls, saturated surface snow, small point releases, and small skier-triggered slides.Weather
- Air Temp
- 45-55
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Clear, calm, and warm! Temperatures stayed well above freezing throughout the day. The wind was nearly unnoticeable, except for the occasional light gust at the ridgeline.
Snowpack
First thing in the morning, a surface crust coated the majority of aspects, with pockety surface hoar in sheltered terrain near gullies and creeks. Warming and sun quickly broke down the crust, leaving sunny mid- and upper-elevation slopes soft and sticky by midday.
The thick 3/25 crust was easy to find beneath 12-15 inches of soft snow (F-4f hard). The 3/25 crust remains very supportable; it was challenging just to dig into it with a shovel. The soft snow is still cold, with 1-2 inches of saturated surface snow on top.
Avalanche
A few fresh wet loose avalanches were spotted on sunny aspects across the Paradise area. Many of these appeared to be triggered by rockfall. We were also able to trigger small wet loose avalanches with ski cuts at middle and upper elevations. These releases mostly consisted of the top couple of inches of wet snow, gouging down ~5 inches into the softer snow below.