South Side: Devils Kitchen/ White River Canyon/ Illumination Saddle

Today marked the first real warm day after an extended stretch of winter-like conditions on Mt Hood. The snowpack didn't like this and demonstrated the ability to produce large, natural wet avalanches (including one very large, D3 wet slab) in the White River Canyon. The snowpack was wet, mushy, and unsupportable by noon on solar slopes below 9000 ft. Above this, we found a drier snowpack, but that likely won't be the case for much longer as hot temperatures are here to stay for a bit. Mt Hood is shedding its winter coat, so be ready for dynamic avalanche conditions, ice/rock fall, and opening crevasses in the coming days. 

Today was hot and the snowpack was reacting. We saw one very large wet slab (D3) avalanche in the White River Canyon ( SE, 6700 ft), in addition to several other large wet slab/loose avavalanches ranging in aspect/elevation. Check out the avalanche obs for more details.

Unfortunately, our recent east wind event on May 9th raked the upper mountain and left plenty of rough surfaces to ski over on the Triangle moraine. We did find the west aspects of the Reid Glacier to be more loaded up than usual due to the east wind event.