Snoqualmie Pass

Sunshine and slightly warmer temperatures shouldn’t create any avalanche concerns. Instead, the laundry list of challenging travel hazards is more likely to shape your plans. Give yourself extra time to deal with variable surface conditions.

It looks like another chilly morning at the trailhead on Sunday. Even plentiful sunshine and slightly warmer temperatures won’t likely be enough to significantly soften the crusty surface. With the snowpack generally “locked up” there shouldn’t be much in the way of avalanche concerns. If you really go hunting in higher elevation, rocky terrain, you might find a thin pocket of wind drifted snow over the 1/10 crust. An observation from Friday noted these types of small, isolated concerns.

The biggest hazard continues to be the travel conditions. These are the worst under the trees and at lower elevations where a frozen coral reef of tree bombs, ice chunks, tracks, and crusts make even the most mellow terrain, harrowing. A skiff of snow from Thursday helped traveling out in the open become a bit more bearable. Breakable crusts, icy slopes, and pockets of settled snow still make for variable conditions. Toss in piles of old avalanche debris, open creeks, and rock-hard old rollerballs…. You’re getting the picture. It might take longer than expected to navigate through all these challenges. 

An NWAC forecaster in the Alpental Valley on Saturday found plentiful surface hoar and near surface facets. Where there was softer snow, it was shallow (1-4 inches) and sat over a very stout 1/10 crust. Riders near Stampede Pass found similar conditions, with softer snow generally above 4500ft. Impressively, the 1/10 crust was snowmobile supportable! That’s super strong! In both locations, travel exceeded our very low expectations.

While there’s not much concern in the current snowpack, we are tracking the snow surfaces and upper few inches to see how they change as we patiently await our next storm system.