Mt. Judah

We toured the E and S sides of Mt. Judah this morning. On our initial ascent we noted weak to non-existent snow surface refreeze under forest canopy on all aspects. On open slopes there was a decent snow surface refreeze of up the 6 inches at P hard. By 11 am we began to encounter areas where the snow surface was losing supportability on open slopes. Boot penetration into the snowpack became boot top deep in places.

At 11:15 am we encountered deep wet snow conditions on SE aspect terrain. It was easy to intentionally trigger very small wet loose avalanches on convex rolls that entrained the top 2 inches of surface wet snow.

We crossed into a few areas of open northerly aspect terrain on the start of our exit from the area around noon. On these open northerly slopes, snow surface melt was much less than what had already occurred this morning on E-SE-S aspect terrain. On the open northerly aspects, only to top 0.5 to 1 inches of the snow surface was soft wet snow. These northerly slopes remained more frozen than melted at midday.

We noted some areas of previously collapsed and melted cornice both along our approach and along the summit ridge. Nice little mid slope waterfalls and open, running creeks suggested well established drainage from the snowpack.

We intentionally triggered two very small wet loose avalanches by ski cutting a convex roll. Between 11:30 am and noon we triggered a few areas of wet snow collapses while ascending SE aspect terrain between 7,400' and 7,900'. These collapses covered areas ranging mostly from 5 to 10 feet in diameter, but one was closer to 60 feet in diameter. These collapses occurred on open slopes where the surface melt-freeze crust had become soft enough to bend but remained ski supportable. Soft wet snow grains that did not refreeze last night were under the crust and weak enough to collapse. This time window where the slab has just the right characteristics to bend and drive propagation are short lived during the daily melt cycle.