Seattle Ridge

We toured up to a high point of 3,000' on Seattle Ridge to get an initial assessment for the season. We dug several snowpits along the way, and skied one run on the front side. We did not see any major concerns in the pits, but we found a few layers that we will be tracking in the days and weeks ahead. We noticed widespread glide activity throughout Turnagain Pass, with several glide avalanches that had released within the past 24 hours. We also found a fresh layer of surface hoar on the current surface that will be worth paying attention to once it is buried.

Coverage is looking pretty good up high, but is very thin up to around 1500-2000'. There was a crust up to around 2000' that made for challenging skiing, but conditions were good at higher elevations. We found around a foot of soft snow on the surface at our high point of 3000'. Worth the walk if you can tolerate some battle skiing down low.

Widespread glide activity throughout Turnagain Pass on both sides of the road. A lot of rollerballs on very steep southerly terrain. Few loose snow avalanches from past week.

We dug snowpits at 2000', 2500', and 3000'. Our lowest pit was right below the rainline from last week's storms, and the entire snowpack was ~1.5' (45 cm) deep. Our middle elevation pit was about 3' (90 cm) deep, and had a few layers of dry snow near the surface with alternating layers of wet snow or crusts. The snowpack at 3000' was 5' (150 cm) deep and had a few thin crusts within the middle third of the snowpack. See attached photos for detailed snowpack information.

We will be paying close attention to the progression of these alternating crust layers. We'll also be keeping a close eye on the layer of surface hoar that currently exists on the snow surface. This is less problematic on solar aspects, but was present along the ridgetop on north and westerly aspects.