Quick report
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Many, many wet avalanches yesterday (20200418) and/or Friday afternoon. The west side bowls of the Mount Ogden ridgeline featured small slides beneath pretty much all rock. Additional avalanches were present at the Sisters in Strawberry, below the chutes of Mount Ogden, in the Race Starts, in the Middle Bowl zone, etc. Some of these were new paths with the recent warming that hadn't run yet this spring, and otherwise were repeat paths running farther and longer than previously. </p>
New avalanche in the race starts, running about 350 vertical feet.
Cornices still loom. For scale, the treetop in the photo of Porky's is about 4 or 5 feet tall.
Clear wind transport of snow over the cornice lip on the Mount Ogden ridgeline.
Snowpack
Listening to Operation Ivy on the morning's drive hinted at the overnight Freeze Up. This was pretty thin at low and mid elevations. However, the itinerant cloud cover and persistent wind at upper elevation meant uphill travel was fast provided you didn't slip on the hard, icy surface (ski crampons advisable). This also meant that the mid-morning corn didn't develop fully, making for chattery turns on the frozen surface.
There was a brief moment of great corn skiing on smooth slopes between about 8500 and 7800ft or so, but I imagine this was short lived. Below this surface conditions were quite damp, grabby, and not terribly inspiring.