Quick report
My goals today were to check on a weather station and get some bonus travel, as time allowed. While we had planned to ski something bigger and steeper, we pulled the plug due to low coverage conditions and poor snow quality. Many alpine northerlies in the area have slick, winded surface conditions; a slip and fall, combined with poor coverage, wouldn't be a fun time.
The surface crust at low elevations is not particularly conducive to snowmobile travel. Be wary of overheating if you're using machines to travel.
No signs of instability on today's tour.Weather
- Air Temp
- 28
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Inverted temperatures persisted today, and the snow machines were happy for some cold air at low elevations. Cloud cover decreased through the morning. Winds were intermittent and gusting light from the southwest.
Snowpack
- The snow depth in the South Lake area is shallow. Trees, rocks, creeks, and small bodies of water are poking out, and the general depth is around 100cm.
- Surfaces are, you guessed it, variable.
- I found the 1/1 crust 20-40cm down, with a variety of faceted grains above.
- Facets reign supreme, and most locations holding good snow quality (Facet-Pow) lack a slab. Places holding firm (P-K hard) wind board at the surface are continuing to decompose.
- All aspects up to 9800' hold a melt-freeze crust at the surface. Above 9800', crusty surface conditions are confined to sunny slopes.
- We did find softening snow on sunny aspects; however, it was contained to the top few cm's
- In a hole on a SW aspect, much of the snow above the 1/1 crust is faceted and weak. Without a slab, I was unable to initiate failure in a long column test. (ECTX)