Quick report
It was great to get up and look at the early-season snowpack near Washington Pass. The bitter cold temperatures moderated today, which made for a more comfortable day of snowmobiling and skiing. The snowpack is still shallow but supportable and offers nice recreation opportunities if you watch out for objects hidden just beneath the snow surface. There was a significant amount of wind affect, but it presented as wind crusts of variable depths rather than deep wind slabs. This mainly resulted in variable ski quality in exposed terrain rather than adding any notable wind slab avalanche hazard.
At lower elevations, below 6300ft, we observed surface hoar overlaying a 1-2cm breakable sun crust on steep southern aspects. As we climbed higher in the terrain, this crust faded and eventually disappeared by 6400ft. Even subtle shade seems to preserve soft surfaces.
The only signs of avalanches we observed throughout the day were some dry loose slides off of steep rocky slopes and a handful of rollerballs on cutbanks at lower elevations.
Weather
- Wind Loading
- previous
We quickly climbed out of the valley inversion layer into blue skies just past the Silver Star Snopark. It wasn't above freezing, but it was significantly warmer than previous days. Clouds began filtering in around 11 am, and increased throughout the afternoon. By 2 pm it was fully overcast. Winds were light, primarily out of the west along ridgelines but calm below.
Snowpack
HS at 5400ft: 60cm
HS above 6000ft: 70-90cm
We dug a snow profile at 6800ft and an ESE aspect. The snow coverage looked better than the 74cm of snow we observed in the profile. Soft, faceting recent snow in the top 20cm rested over 50cm of stronger, more consolidated snow. This all sat on 15cm of melt forms over the ground. We observed a layer of rounding surface hoar buried 6cm down, which produced moderate shovel tilt test results. While I could get small column test results on the density change down 20cm with extra force on the column, stability tests were largely unremarkable. The snowpack was strong, but there were widespread weak surfaces and weak snow in the upper pack.