Mt. Houghton

We toured the SE slopes of Mt. Houghton with the intention of seeing wind slabs, warming conditions, and surface wet snow development.

On our drive to the Mt. Rose Hwy, large amounts of blowing snow were visible over the peaks. Upon our arrival at Tahoe Meadow, large amounts of blowing snow were occurring in all open areas. As we ascended the Relay Pk Rd, new drifts had formed across the road, covering tracks from yesterday. Once we left the Rd and crossed into the Wilderness area, we encountered numerous areas of hard wind slab that were very difficult to trigger. The newly formed wind slab was P hard in most areas, 1F hard in some. These wind slabs were on top of 4F hard recent storm snow. We ski cut and stomped on numerous test slopes. We could only get the wind slab to crack if was previously undercut by another ski track.

As we ascended the SE slopes of Mt. Houghton, wet snow was developing on the surface in areas with at least a moderate amount of wind protection. It was easy to create pinwheels by 11:30 am. Wet snow was present in wind sheltered areas at our highpoint of travel of 10,000'.