Weather
- Air Temp
- Above freezing
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- 5000 ft
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Today was a beatiful, calm day to be out above the inversion. Winds were light and we did not observe any blowing snow - even on the upper mountain. The sun felt quite warm, which started making snow moist on steeper solar aspects.
Snowpack
Today we drove up to the South Climb Trailhead on Adams. Our objective was to start tracking surfaces before heading into a stormy strech.
At the TH at 5500 ft, we observed a HS of 45-50 cm. Travel was generally supportable (and sharky) with a thin, breakable surface crust present at these elevations. We also noticed some surface hoar, but it only existed in isolated, sheltered pockets below treeline. Moving higher above treeline, travel became variable with pockets of chalky drifted snow and a variety of slick melt-freeze crusts.
Above 6000 ft the snowpack ranged from 60-80 cm. In multipe test profiles on east and west aspects we observed a generally strong lower snowpack. In one location with a more northerly tilt we observed some near-crust faceting just below the surface crust ( look at photo for more details) . This layer is not concerning at the moment, but worth keeping tabs on as we start building a slab later this week.