Quick report
I wanted to go back to Bishop Creek, and I've not been up to North Lake yet this season. My goals were straightforward: monitor coverage and surfaces, check on the 1/1 crust and interface, and make a few turns.
Coverage in the south zone is noticeably less than north, and many solars are more dirt than snow - even up to 12000+ feet. Soft turns are becoming harder to find. Alpine snow is all different flavors of wind affect. Soft snow can be found only in the most protected and shady pockets. Old facet powder near and below treeline mostly had a crust on it- likely from yesterday's humidity.
Snow cover is still sufficient enough to ski to and from Aspendell without too many shenanigans, but creeks are mostly open, and finding a decent spot to cross can be tricky.
I had considered skiing solar, but was hard-pressed to find a run of continuous snow, and the north breeze was keeping surfaces frozen above 10000 feet or so. I skied a north-facing chute above treeline that was mostly firm windboard with a few soft turns mixed in.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 35 cooling to 25
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- None
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Mostly sunny and calm at 1000am. After 1200pm or so, the N wind kicked up and temperatures dropped noticeably to below freezing above 10500 feet.
Snowpack
No signs of instability.
I dug in at 10400 feet on a NE aspect to look for the New Years crust. I found 180 cm of snow (favored gully) and the 1/1 crust at 115 cm. It was noticeably thinner than observed up north (1cm).
My Extended Column Test proved unproductive (ECTX) and a shovel shear pulled the entire column out in one piece down to the ground.