Quick report
We were (barely) able to skin from the parking lot up to the meadows at 1800ft. From there coverage was good and travel would have been easy had it not been for the soggy snow. At 2000ft it was snowing, with calm to light winds. We slogged up to the pass between Stewart and FCK, and saw a few large snow blobs that had rolled out of trees on cliffs creating snowmen-sized balls and gouging trenches. No genuine loose wet activity but we felt that if we skied anything steep we would get small activity. We dug on the NW side of the saddle above "Freb Meyer Bowl". We observed multiple significant crust layers and multiple layers visibly moist with water. We did not have any layers of concern and did not have any significant shears in tests. It was back and forth between rain and snow at our pit and we did not ski the bowl. Wax would have been nice on the ski back down our tracks. Skiing down through the woods was treacherous and we ended up walking down a bit. We did see large snowballs falling from trees and cliffs and rolling downslope and making big trenches as they went. No actually Wet Loose avalanches though (at that time).
Weather
- Air Temp
- 32
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- Up to 2800
- Recent Snowfall
- 0-5?
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
The wind was mostly light to calm on our tour and gusted out of the west in the saddle where we dug. It was not transporting the saturated snow and was not on our radar for hazards at that elevation. Temps were near 32F at 2700ft and warmer below... Snow was shedding off trees pretty actively up to 2000ft+.
Snowpack
We observed 40-50 cms of now mostly moist snow on a thick crust at most elevations. This snow appeared well bonded to the crust. We dug a profile at 2700 on a NW face and observed many crusts and moist snow layers, but no significant shears. Typical snowpack depth was around 150cm but where we dug was over 2m.