Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Wallowa Alpine Huts guide training observation review from two days in the Northern Wallowas. Lower angled slopes held better quality snow, especially where it was protected from the wind. Exposed mid and upper elevations held wind slabs on many aspects that seemed to be pretty glued in, but are wind slabs nonetheless. Tuesday could have been a mid-spring day and the sun and temperatures on solar aspects warmed the upper couple inches of the snowpack to the point of being wet. I would imagine in steeper terrain, shallow wet loose avalanches could have been easily triggered.
Wind slabs created isolated cracking around skis.Weather
- Air Temp
- 25-32
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Mostly sunny skies on Monday and Tuesday with temperatures in the upper 20's to lower 30's. Winds started out light on Monday, but bumped up in the afternoon evening hours near ridgetops with what sounded like moderate to strong gusts. No new precipitation. Warming of the snow surface occurred on solar aspects on Tuesday afternoon.
Snowpack
We had a few targeted observations throughout our travels:
-Distribution and sensitivity of wind slabs
-Distribution, depth, and thickness of 1/3 Rain Crust
-Look for weak snow near the 1/10 interface.
Crossing below Phat Ridge and South Bowl on Monday, we noted significant settlement cones through the burn.
On Monday afternoon, we noted wind-blown snow plumes along upper ridgelines with shifty winds, but primarily blowing out of the NW. We found windslabs that ranged in depth from 4" to 12" in the mid and upper elevations. We observed wind-stiffened snow on both sides of prominent ridgelines as the winds had been shifting around quite a bit. Along the NW shoulder (local name Marky Mark Trees), above 6500', the wind had stiffened the snow on the windward side of the ridgeline forming stiff sastrugi. We observed isolated cracking around our skis while skinning through this terrain. No test slopes showed reactivity.
We noted the 1/3 Rain Crust to be about 4" from the surface and about 1-2" thick in lower elevation bands. The Rain Crust seemed to disappear around 6500' in the Big Sheep Drainage. Above this elevation, we noted a density change at this interface, but no crust.
After seeing the 1/10 Buried Surface Hoar in the Western Wallowas, we were curious to see if we would find weak snow at this interface in the Northern Wallowas. We did not see it in our hand pits or test pits on NW and SE aspects between 6000 and 8000'
We dug two pits, one on a NW aspect and one on a SE aspect (both around 7700'). We did not get any alarming results in our compression tests or extended column tests, but did note that in areas that have snowpack depths of less than 4 feet, a layer of 4F+ hard rounding facets still exists 2-3 feet from the snow surface. This sits below a crust that varies in thickness from 3-5". Even in the face of no alarming results, no recent avalanches, and no recent significant changes to the snowpack, we will continue to monitor this layer.
By the time we reascended a south aspect up to Wing Tip from Big Sheep on Tuesday afternoon, the upper 1-2" of the snow surface was becoming wet and gloppy from the sun. Expect steeper solar aspects to have a Melt Freeze Crust on them in the morning hours moving forward.