Camas

We parked at 5500' at the last switchback before the parking lot. The road was snow covered from there, but once we got to the trail we spent a lot of time taking our skis off to cross dirt patches. Snow became continuous on the trail around 6100' as it wrapped around to the north. Snow was not continuous enough to ski (or avalanche) until about 6500'. Even then, that was only on northerly aspects, and southerly aspects across the valley still looked pretty dry.

Below 7000' there was 1-3 inches of new snow on a supportive crust. Underneath this crust was moist meltforms. A higher elevations there was 3-6 inches of new snow on a crust. On southerly aspects this crust overlaid moist melt forms, similar to low elevations. On northerly aspects this crust overlaid dry snow, though when we dug we saw evidence of previous water percolation through the dry snow. The snowpack is transitioning to its spring form, but it's not quite there yet!

At ridge crests and roll-overs we found a soft new wind slab up to a foot deep. We did not see any cracking in this new snow.

Brief breaks in the clouds caused the top inch or so of snow to become moist, but there just wasn't enough heat to create a widespread wet loose problem.

We saw evidence of old wet slab and glide avalanches that were probably about a week old. There was also evidence of small wet loose avalanches on all aspects, which were buried by last night's snow.

The skiing was surprisingly good. Up high the snow was dense enough that we didn't feel the crust, and down low it was enjoyable dust on crust.

The snowpack is into its springtime transition, but it isn't fully there yet.

At lower and middle elevations (below 7000'), an inch or less of new snow fell on a melt-freeze crust of varying thickness. Below the melt-freeze crust were moist meltforms, down to at least 50 cm everywhere I checked. It was the same story on upper elevation south aspects, though with 3-6 inches of new snow.

On upper elevation northerly aspects the snowpack still contains evidence of winter layers. We dug at pit at 8100' on a NE aspect, and found mostly dry snow with lenses of wet snow. We also found discontinuous ice lenses and crusts formed by percolating water that had since refrozen. The melt-freeze crust below the new snow was supportive to skis and boots. We got no results in snowpack tests, but as we know, compression tests and extended column tests and poor indicators of stability for wet snow.