Quick report
Most of the route was on east/southeast aspects, some more northeasterly at the middle elevations. Very stable (icy) touring/skiing conditions at upper elevations; at lower elevations, soft surface snow, but deeper snowpack stable. Observed mid-size loose wet slides from earlier (previous day or two?) on the east aspects below Jeru peak. In pit tests, no propagation for the ECT on the NE aspect; in another pit on a SE aspect, CT242Q3/RP @7cm down, CT24 Q3 @22cm down. Very irregular breaks. Stable snowpack during today's conditions; lower elevations had not yet re-frozen after recent warm temps, but elevations greater than ~5300' had refrozen and were solid.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 30
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Temperatures were dropping, more overcast and considerably cooler than the previous warm sunny days, which was enabling the snowpack to re-solidify. While we were out there, conditions went from partly sunny to fogged in and windy especially up at the ridgetop.
Snowpack
Snowpack was isothermic, with melt/freeze crusts on the higher elevation surfaces and increasing grain sizes in the upper layers. The snowpack is still holding its structure fairly well, maintaining rounds in the middle layers, and not yet saturated, although some of the lower layers are increasing in moisture. Crusts and old layers lower in the snowpack are gradually deteriorating. No obvious weaker layers observed on the SE or NE aspects we examined.