Kendall Trees

We took a tour into the Commonwealth drainage today with the goal to assess the new snow coverage and identify any wind affect near the Cascade Crest. It was a beautiful day to be in the mountains, with clearing skies and a fresh coat of snow. Access into Commonwealth is still pretty rough, with mandatory navigation around open creeks, rocks, and exposed logs. Once we found better coverage, a firm crust beneath the new snow made skinning difficult for much of the up track. Conditions drastically improved as we exited the tree canopy onto open slopes. We climbed as high as 5,400 feet on the SW side of Kendall and found 12 inches of low-density snow with light wind texture at the surface. In a quick pit, we identified the crusty snow below as the recently formed 3/8 crust. Some weaker, melt-form snow still exists deeper in the snowpack, but it's guarded by the thick, knife-hard 3/8 crust on top. The 2/7 and 2/13 weak layers have turned pencil hard and no longer resemble any form of weak snow. For our descent, we linked open slopes to maximize snow coverage and were pleasantly surprised by the conditions!

The snowpack throughout Commonwealth, and the SW side of Kendall, is still very thin, especially under tree canopy. Leaving the parking lot, there was less than a foot of coverage on the ground, most of it from the recent snowfall. Snow depth measured around 3-4 feet at 5,000 feet. On Kendall, we found 12-13 inches of new, low-density snow sitting on the 3/8 crust. The 3/8 crust is incredibly firm, knife-hard, and up to 5 inches thick in places. Below the crust is a few inches of looser, large-grained melt form. The 2/13 and 2/7 interfaces have turned pencil-hard, with even firmer old snow below, all the way to the ground.

A ~1 cm thick layer of graupel was identified at the very bottom of the new snow, just above the 3/8 crust. Pit tests showed minimal reactivity within the new snow.