Quick report
This was an incredibly wet solstice! Significant amounts of water fell in the form of rain below 8,500', with a subtler rain line extending above 9,000' on the Salmon side of the pass. Storm started dry and cool, but by the early afternoon the rain line was spiking. Snow surfaces were saturated above 8,000' - easy to squeeze liquid water out of the snow. Tons of roller balls and wet snow sluffing going on, it would have been easy to trigger wet avalanches on steep slopes at low and middle elevations and I was mindful of these happening naturally. Slushy face shots on the sled. Visibility was quite bad, but I found one large avalanche that had released naturally earlier in the day. I bopped up to the pass around sunset to do a little ski quality sampling and look at the snow. It had rained/drizzed on the salmon side of the pass all the way to the top, but the WRV side was still dry when I started skiing. By 9 PM it was starting to drop some liquid precip from the sky on the WRV side at least up to 8,600'. A pit dug at 8,900' on the WRV side of the pass on an E aspect produced propagating snowpack tests on the very subtle sun crust with small facets that formed on 12/20 (ECTP 13 down 2 feet) and on the early season facets (ECTP 23 down 3 feet).
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Aspect
- W
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 9000 ft
Ran all the way to the creek. Suspect this was before the rain started around noon, debris had a bit of a wet character but I suspect that was from frictional heating.