Quick report
See avalanche observations
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- 2700
- Recent Snowfall
- 35
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Cloud cover ranged from patchy blue skies to obscured, especially at higher elevations. At times it felt like small amounts of greenhousing was happening. Wind was calm, and previous wind loading wasn’t evident. Temperatures were above freezing and rising .
Snowpack
We immediately felt that snow was slightly upside down, with last night’s foot of lighter new snow sitting over the heavier surface layer from the previous day. Snow was lighter again, beneath that. Regardless, skiing was still floaty and pretty good.
The snow was spring hot pow to varying degrees, though. We didn’t find any light fluffy snow anywhere, even on north-facing slopes at 5400’, our max elevation. Given very subtle slope angle changes, even in predominantly north-facing areas, you might have found a wet snow surface during periods when the sun was popping out.
Resistant failures occurred beneath the upside down snow layer, at about 54cm deep. In general, the snow was heavy and stubborn.
At 4000ft there was about 40cm of snow over the old snow layer. There was a very subtle crust at the top of that old melt layer. At 5000ft there was about 60cm of new snow over the old snow layer, and a similar very soft, subtle crust capping the old melt forms.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2.5
- Type
- SS
- Aspect
- N
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 4600 ft
We expected to see more slab avalanche activity than we did. The only natural avalanches were large slabs on the lower north facing flanks of Mt Shuksan at about 4500ft. They likely occurred overnight. Our main avalanche concern was wet loose. There were small and large rollerballs in most steep areas, especially near trees and exposed rocks. Natural small wet loose avalanches were seen in several places, along with many that were human-triggered. By the time we left at 2pm, although there was some activity, there still wasn't as much as we'd expected.