Seattle Ridge

The recent storm snow over the past few days has improved riding conditions, though the route to Seattle Ridge remains icy and challenging in spots. We found 8–10 inches of soft snow across most of the riding area, resting on a variable crust. This new snow offers good snowmachining and skiing opportunities but sits atop weak, sugary facets. We dug a pit on Sunnyside, just north of the uptrack, at roughly 2,300 ft and recorded propagating test results (ECTP 23, 16 inches down). We also observed recent avalanche activity on this new snow, including one small remotely triggered and one small skier-triggered avalanche in Warm-Up Bowl, and one skier-triggered and one remotely triggered avalanche in Main Bowl. Additionally, we saw a larger natural avalanche crown in the Peak to Creek area (between Warm-Up and Triangle Bowl) that propagated a couple hundred feet and was around a foot deep. This avalanche likely occurred within the past few days from wind loading on the weak near-surface facets. While these avalanches are currently shallow, increased wind loading could produce larger slides on this layer.

We observed several recent skier-triggered, remotely triggered, and natural avalanches that had occured over the past few days. We saw small skier-triggered and remotely triggered avalanches in Warm-Up Bowl and the Main Bowl, as well as a larger natural avalanche that propagated a couple hundred feet in the zone between Warm-Up Bowl and Triangle Bowl (see photos). All observed crown depths looked to be about 0.5 to 2 feet deep. We saw active snow transport on the southern end of Seattle Ridge, loading southeasterly slopes.

We found 8–10 inches of soft snow atop a variable crust throughout the motorized zone of Turnigan Pass.

We dug a snowpit on Sunnyside, just north of the uptrack at 2,300 ft, and observed a snowpack structure similar to what we have seen in recent weeks, now with more fresh snow on the surface. We found sugary facets throughout the upper snowpack, but most notably, larger 2–3 mm facets sandwiched between crusts about 16 inches down. This layer produced propagating results on an extended column test (ECTP 25, 16 inches down). The snowpack structure remains weak throughout Turnigan Pass, and these facet layers may take a long time to stabilize.