Big Pine Creek

Quick report

We walked up the North Fork of Big Pine Creek to look around and observed some minimal snow conditions. Consistent coverage begins around 9k', but with the well packed trail, no kind of snow travel equipment is called for until well above 10k'. Well below 10k' though, we started to notice that the majority of the 30-60cm snowpack is faceted and sugary. The snow in some patchy spots was showing signs of rounding but not bonding or consolidating, some areas had a dense consolidated layer at the ground with the facets above, and in some places the facets went all the way to the ground. Above the facets was a 5-10cm breakable crust that seemed to be a combination of wet, wind-packed snow and melt-freeze, and above this we saw about 10cm of new winter snow at 10k'. While coverage overall is pretty thin in this area, there's definitely more than enough snow on the steeper slopes to create a considerable problem when this current snowpack gets buried under new snow.