Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
We found generally stable conditions during the last few days while staying at the Pioneer Yurt. 3/28: Toasty walk/sled in with a mostly isothermic snowpack below 8300'. Superficial crusts set up in the afternoon as clouds built, temperatures dropped and winds increased. A handful of brief flurries dropped a trace of graupel throughout the evening. 3/29: Woke to broken skies, temps in the 20s F, and a dusting of snow over supportable surface crusts. The clouds rolled in around 10am with light flurries of snow and the cloud deck descended to ~9k. Sticky surface conditions below 9k' in the late afternoon due to warming temperatures. The clouds lifted and broke up in the late afternoon ahead of clear overnight skies. We triggered one ~30' long crack while flirting just beyond the rocks on a corniced ridgeline in the afternoon - and kept our distance after that. 3/30: There was a solid refreeze overnight with broken skies in the morning. Clouds built over the high peaks in mid-morning before breaking up by early afternoon. We harvested quality corn on solar aspects above 9k' during the afternoon. Snow flurries start late in the evening and continued throughout the night. 3/31: We woke to 1-3" of snowfall with continued light snow until our exit midday. Conditions were firm and fast until ~7k', where surfaces were a bit more moist. Poking into the snowpack throughout the trip, we observed moist but draining rounded grains below thick surface refreezes up to ~10k'. Above that typically alpine conditions dominated with thick wind-affected or stout sun-crusted surfaces, lingering weaker basal snow and variable snow depths.