Quick report
Went into GOS to look at the snowpack after rain and warming from last week. The recent snow did not seem to have an impact, likely from the high winds over the last 3 days and I found no evidence of an avalanche problem. I did not move particularly high into terrain, but from visually looking at Main Gully it appears thin and not to be loaded with a wind slab, just wind-affected snow (this was from snow that I traveled on lower in the gully). While I did not find evidence of a wind slab avalanche problem (again from a small sample set! ) , terrain in GOS is still developing and you can see rocks and trees still exposed in Main Gully.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 0
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Recent Snowfall
- 1
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Cold and windy (as was forecast) temperature is from Hermit Lake at noonish. Little bits of soft snow were found here and there, but most places were either scoured or highly wind-affected and firm from that. Saw some snow being blown around, but the high winds seemed to be scouring more than loading.
Snowpack
Snow in the woods at the parking lot of Pinkham was firm and wind-affected, which the woods typically can shelter snow and is a place you may find good powder, but those powder stashes were hard to find as variable wind-affected surfaces or scoured surfaces were the majority of surfaces I encountered.
Along the GOS trail, there are a few places that function as good test slopes and are east-facing. Each of these places I found to be firm and wind-affected. Which supported my thinking that I would be unlikely to find much (or any) reactive snow after hours of raging Mount Washington winds. There have been over 18 hours of winds over 100 mph with (lower but still strong) strong winds sustained over 55 mph for the last 3 days.
Limited visibility gave me less photo opportunities (also cold conditions) than I was hoping for, but overall, GOS is still filling back in after warming and rain events. I did not find obvious evidence of avalanche activity in Main Gully, was looking for evidence of debris but I didn't find any, seems like these high winds scoured the terrain more than loaded it.