Quick report
There is little snow below 6000ft in the Wenatchee mountains and travel off of summer roads on skis would have been inadvisable. So, I followed the summer road to a meadow at around 5000ft, where I left the skis behind on the road and booted up to around 5100ft to get a better view of the rest of the terrain. With the exception of some deeper wind-drifted areas, very low snow cover existed to ridgetops at 5800ft. Boot penetration was to the ground, which continued to make travel difficult even with the thin snowpack. A 1cm thick surface crust exited throughout the terrain. On southern aspects, this crust was a bit thicker, although still not supportable to skis. As I left the field around noon, sunny slopes were just beginning to soften.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Clear skies above the valley fog persisting along the east slopes of the Cascades. Winds were calm, and temperatures were in the upper 20F's. Surfaces in the sun were warming and just beginning to moisten in the early afternoon, while shady slopes stayed cold, frozen, and crusty.
Snowpack
There was around 15cm of snow at the trailhead, increasing to around 30cm above 4700ft. Open areas held more consistent snow, while locations under the tree canopy still had bare spots and too many obstacles for "off-road" skiing. The surface has a thin, breakable crust over around 5cm of recent snow.
In a snowpit at 5100ft on a northern aspect, I found a total snow height of around 30cm. The shallow snowpack consists of crusts with weak snow in between. A thicker crust down 5cm was just barely supportable to skis but not to boots. Weak faceted snow at the base of the snowpack has experienced liquid water and a few melt-freeze cycles.