Giddy Giddy Gulch

The weather felt like spring today on Mount Shasta. The snowpack is a bit confused. Snow surfaces consisted of a highly variable mix of aspect and elevation-dependent crusts - sometimes breakable, sometimes softening completely as solar input increased throughout the day - wind-affected surfaces such as firm windboard and old wind-drifted pockets, and icy patches on exposed features. Some decent turns can be sleuthed out. Rime ice plasters the rocks of the upper mountain, including the West Face, Casaval Ridge, Trinity Chutes, the Red Banks, Thumb Rock, Sargents Ridge, and Green Butte Ridge. Falling rime ice, slide-for-life conditions, and variable snow surfaces for skiers and riders will be the primary hazards in the coming days.

Poor overnight refreezes have hindered the development of a true corn cycle. On a 28-degree south aspect at 8,600 feet at 12pm, about 4 inches of soft (4F), wet surface snow sat atop a generally right-side-up (4F to P) upper snowpack. There was a prominent, hard (I) ~ .5-inch crust down 13 inches. Moist older snow (1F) lay beneath the crust. Signs of instability were limited to rollerballs - possibly from previous days - which initiated on southerly aspects near treeline on lower Casaval Ridge and in Giddy Giddy Gulch. Snow depth at the Shasta Alpine Hut (7,900 feet) measured 71 inches, consistent with the Old Ski Bowl weather station (7,600 feet), which reports the same number this afternoon.