Quick report
Despite advise to the contrary in this morning’s avalanche forecast, I chose to travel solo in the Castle Pass / Andesite Peak area today. A solo pow surfer had broken trail out to Andesite, and I carried on and broke trail up to Castle Pass. Trail breaking was reasonable considering the amount of new snow. 24-36 inches had fallen or been deposited previously. I was hoping to see a widespread avalanche cycle from the night before, because there’s really nothing like new avalanche activity to tell you what’s really going on. I did not see any natural avalanche activity, nor was I able to kick off cornices and create any avalanches. The snow seemed to have fallen relatively evenly over the landscape and in the trees, so I did not expect as much wind loading as I had when planning, There is a lot of new snow available for wind transport. I did not perform any formal avalanche tests, but test kicks on small slopes on the approach, and cornice kicks on the ridge both failed to show much instability. There was a lull in the storm most of the morning into the early afternoon. High clouds showed evidence of high winds aloft, but conditions were quite calm on the ground in the valley on the approach. As the day progressed, ridge winds increased out of the west and visibility dropped with new snow falling. There were several parties of two and a couple of solo skiers heading up the trail as I was skiing out around 3pm. The skiing was really good. I observed that the snow appeared to have fallen relatively evenly over the landscape and in the trees. This was evidence to me that the snow fell without a lot of wind transport.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast