Pyramid

It was a warm and sunny day, and the snowpack was heating up. The top 1-2 inches of recent snow from Monday was easily rollerballing on steep sunny slopes. We also observed several small natural wet loose avalanches on steep upper elevation south aspects that were confined to the top couple inches of the snowpack. On south aspects, crusts below the recent snow were also beginning to break down. Some areas were still supportable in the afternoon, but many areas were becoming unsupportable and punchy to skis. Our biggest concern with continued warming is wet avalanches starting to gouge down deeper in the snowpack, creating larger avalanches. Sunny low elevation slopes were generally either isothermal or bare ground. 

We found the layer of buried surface hoar around 10 cm deep on a NW aspect at 5900 ft. In this location, there wasn't enough of a slab above the surface hoar for it to produce an avalanche. Our biggest concern with the surface hoar is wind loaded areas at upper elevations, where the slab could be deep enough and strong enough to allow for propagation. Unfortunately, we didn't make it up to that kind of terrain today. We also found the surface hoar layer on a south aspect at 6500 ft, but it was not very deep, poorly preserved, and surrounded by moist snow. I suspect that the surface hoar layer is being impacted by warming and melting on most southerly slopes. 

There were many trees down on the Pyramid Pass trail that made travel difficult. Thankfully, the snowmobile ride from the Eastside trailhead to the Pyramid Pass trailhead was mostly snow covered.