Mores Creek Summit

Quick report

We toured towards Pilot Peak where we found a deeper/skiable snowpack starting at around 7000’. As more melt occurs at lower elevations, access will continue to become more difficult. Skinning up we had no obvious cracking or collapsing, but we did notice a few isolated pockets of wind affected snow. None of these appeared to have enough build up to be a worry where we were traveling. We dug a quick pit and found a 100cm deep snowpack on an East facing aspect at about 7000’. Here we performed a shovel sheer test that failed at moderate pressure Q2 on a weak layer of facets on top of the crust @ 55cm deep. This is likely the melt freeze crust from several weeks ago. The crust was roughly 2-5 cm thick and stout, with another layer of rough facets below it. Given the general stability of the snowpack and lack of a significant slab we felt safe with our route choices. Overall, we found softer snow on E, NE, N aspects and corn on S aspects. There was a notable crust on the surface in sun affected areas. Weather was quite warm, sunny and clear with no cloud cover and calm winds.