Weather
- Air Temp
- 28
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Recent Snowfall
- skiff
For most of my tour it felt like I was inside a cloud. On the top of Paulina Peak the wind was strong from the west-southwest. It started to snow moderately around 10 AM and was snowing all the way down to 10-mile sno-park.
Snowpack
The snowpack at lake elevation is pretty sparse. Up on the peak we've been measuring between 50 and 70 cm of snow. Today I found surface snow that was faceted on most slopes that are open to the sky (see pictures). These faceted grains (facets and surface hoar) can form dangerous weak layers once burried in the snowpack. With only an inch of snow in the forecast they won't pose any threat, but if they were to become buried deeper in the snowpack they could result in avalanches.
We have also been finding weak faceted snow at the base of the snowpack in snow profiles that we've dug near the peak. Today I could find this weak layer, but didn't get any failures on the layer during compression tests. While this layer was once "fist hard" (the weakest snow) it is now "four-finger hard", which is a sign that it is becoming less weak and problematic. If you want to learn more about hand hardness, check out this explanation from the National Avalanche Center: Hand Hardness.