Quick report
We sledded, skied to the Tunnel Ridge snow station to troubleshoot and repair the ongoing power issues.
- The height of snow at the station has dropped 30 inches over 7 days!
- Tracks from last Saturday and Sunday are still visible - often barely - at the snow surface.
- Trees below about 6500 feet are completely clear of snow. Above that elevation, the trees have a few inches of new snow.
- The near-surface snow was unfrozen wet grains, mostly drained, and usually supportable on skis, though grabby. A lot of effort to get skis across the fall line on our exit.
- We heard Varied Thrushes and had highly varied weather. See weather section.
- Streams open and running to at least 5000 feet.
- Lots of debris from avalanches the past week. In the only drainage we could really see (Tunnel Creek), none of the slides were historic.
After some splicing and zip-tieing, we got Tunnel operational.
Media to follow
Weather
- Air Temp
- 40
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- 5500'
- Recent Snowfall
- 1
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Highly variable. Rain showers, snow showers, snain showers, partly cloudy skies, ominous clouds, calm, moderate gusts - all sometimes in the same 10 minutes.
Snowpack
Wet. Wet very deep. Lots of runnels. A soft (4F), 1-cm thick crust at the surface above about 5500 feet. Many S-W slopes below 5000 feet are bare.
Avalanche
Lots of debris in big fans/ runouts in Tunnel Creek, though nothing near the ends of the historic runouts. Most at bottom of track or mid runout. Most debris eemed to be from long-running Loose Wet avalanches, maybe some smaller glide cracks. Only saw on crown from a slab, though we only had brief views.