Mt. Jimmy jr.

AlpineLifeSnowpackReport , Saturday 30th March, 2024 10:20AM

Very good conditions out there. But we saw many red flags in the higher alpine. A strong supportive layer was present almost all the way to the summit where you couldn't punch a pole through, which made for some slippery situations, but we made it up without ski crampons. The new snow made it pretty workable for up tracking. And the turns were some of the best of the year from the ground to low alpine. Conditions in the higher alpine changed very quickly, though. We saw shooting cracks, and actually saw very large re-settlements of big pieces of cohesive snow, which got worse the higher into the alpine we got, and at one point a crack propagated to a small cornice fall maybe 10m away. We decided to turn back to where the snow was more stable and boot pack a route that was not exposed to avalanche terrain or cornices. But the snow on the way down had us quoting Owen Wilson all day long: "Wow"