Mount Snoqualmie / Friendlies

We missioned up Mt. Snoqualmie today to get a view of the upper Alpental Valley and get a feel for conditions top to bottom. After skinning to the base of the waterfall crux, we found it was melted out, so a quick boot was in order. Well, we continued booting until roughly 4500', so about half the ascent up the Phantom. At that point, the terrain and snow were more conducive to skinning again, and we made fairly quick work getting to treeline and the Thunder Creek exit. At this point, we did observe some actively blowing snow but were perplexed as to how since there didn't appear to be any dry snow in sight. In fact, we did not find any meaningful dry snow throughout our travels today.

The skiing over to the Friendlies was horrible on firm, irregular surfaces. We ascended to the ridgeline and a few good vantage points to look for recent avalanche activity. As detailed below, numerous large debris piles were spotted, highlighted by the documented one in Source Lake and the North Slope of Chair Peak, which extends down to Snow Lake, resulting in two substantial piles.

The ski out was the best of the day as we exited up valley and found that lower elevation slopes in the open had softened slightly. Not enough to drive a wet loose problem.

Overall, a good primer for spring skiing with a boot to start the day and variable skiing. Unfortunately, can't say we found many, if any, good turns. Oh well, at least we saw some big avalanches.

There were old rollerballs form yesterday's warm weather. They were frozen.

Where we traveled today, the upper snowpack was mostly firm and supportable. Under tree cover, you could get more purchase, except where tree bombs had fallen. Out in the open, the surface crust was building and mostly supportable. You could just get an edge in to make skinning tolerable. It wasn't fully locked up, but it was getting there. Its very irregular with old debris, tree bombs, runnels, etc. Not a lot of smooth skiing to be found.

Looking below the surface crust, the snowpack is comprised of large melt forms that are weak and moist.