East Cascades: Ash Creek Butte / Pilgrim Creek

Today, Sam and I rode from the Pilgrim Creek Snow Park to the Ash Creek Butte area. At the trailhead and until you are above 5,000 feet, the snowpack is quite thin, average one to two feet deep. There are several short melted out sections of trail before you reach the junction with Swamp Creek. Beyond this point, snow coverage is consistent and depths increase with an average of 240 centimeters near 6,000 feet. The prominent avalanche problem today was wet loose. We found southerly aspects to be warming quickly and displaying red flags such as roller balls and a natural wet loose avalanche near 7,500 feet.

On shaded and northerly aspects between 6,000 and 8,000 feet there are four to eight inches of dry snow remaining from Wednesday's storm system. This morning we observed snow transport on Shastina and across the summit plateau of Mount Shasta. We stubborn cracking in an isolated wind drift on an east aspect near 8,000 feet, otherwise the wind slab problem is rapidly fading as warmer temperatures and light wind allow the snowpack to heal.

Overall, there are no deep instabilities within the snowpack and the focus below and near the treeline is wet loose avalanches.

We observed several roller balls on southerly aspects, one small natural wet loose avalanche, and one small skier triggered wet loose avalanche. We observed isolated cracking less than one foot long on the eastside of a ridgetop.