Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
Hiked the summer trail from the car to ~4500. Travel was pretty simple, no crazy melt-freeze crusts to deal with (no crampons or ski crampons in the bag). Transitioned to skins ~4500 and travel was relatively easy to the large bench below the southern summit of Rock. There was clear evidence of wind transport in the alpine. We skinned to the summit; along the way we looked down the west face of Rock, which looked to have well protected snow in a leeward wind path. We continued on to the summit and dropped into the main northern bowl skier's right of the summit. There was one convexity with limited snow coverage, but we didn't hit any big rocks. Polar aspects NTL and BTL skied very well and we transitioned down around 5400'. We returned to the summit and skied directly off the top down the main chute on the north side. There was one stubborn wind slab, approx 4-6 inches in depth, but it was isolated and did not propagate widely. Plenty of evidence of wind transport and wind affect ATL. Near ridgeline there were stubborn planar wind slabs in varying depth, from 4 to 8 inches. Reactivity was limited, with only one or two small releases while skiing and none propagated.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 25
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- 4500
- Recent Snowfall
- 4
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Mostly overcast with an alpine wind most of the day.
Snowpack
Snow depth kicks up drastically above 4500; below still feels like low tide. Shaded and polar aspects above 4500 still held cold snow. There's a clear interface from the ~11/23 rain2snow transition, with varying depth depending on aspect and elevation, anywhere from ~6 to ~16 inches. In open areas there is evidence of surface hoar development, especially on polar aspects. ATL there is plenty of wind affect, especially on northern and eastern aspects. These aspects had a styrofoam, punchy texture to them. Leeward west facing aspects held the best snow.