Siyeh Pass

Quick report

Some serious wind loading was occurring during Sunday where a W 20-25mph wind with gusts up to ~40mph remained consistent throughout the day. Lots of spindrift coming down and any ridgeline had a 40-50ft fan of snow blowing E. Many soft wind slabs were coming off naturally on surrounding peaks: GTTS and Mahtapi. Hard slabs were very well bonded to the layer beneath and were unreactive however with more loading and cold temps this could become a problem

Weather

Air Temp

30s

Cloud Cover

scattered

Wind Loading

intense

Recent Snowfall

5

Snow Avail For Transport

moderate amounts

Windy

Snowpack

Poor coverage down low <5500’ led to areas of drifted snow averaging around 5-8’ deep even on some west aspects that made travel fairly easy. Variable crossloading led to a consistent 1-2’ 1F hard windslab sitting on a stout K/P hard crust all aspects above 6000’. Very stout glassy freeze-thaw crust anywhere that snow was not recently deposited made it feel like skiing in April.

Avalanche

A few D1 Soft Slab avalanches that looked less than a week old came off Seth Pass and a larger D1.5 that involved the entire snowpack had run down off peak 8491’ just east of Siyeh Pass.