Bishop Creek and Highway Observations

The window for skiing soft, supportable spring snow was short and early in Bishop Creek. It was hard to balance my timing to see wet loose instability and also descend on a useable snowpack. As it was, I both found wet loose avalanches easy to trigger, and hand to kick turn my way down pushy, wet snow with knee-deep ski penetration by midday.

I drove up to the June area on 395 to look at wet snow avalanches and was not disappointed. 

Rollerballs and wet loose avalanches were easy to trigger on all aspects as they thawed, which varied with overnight freezing level and time of day.

South and east aspects are melting out quickly.

There was a poor freeze overnight below 9000 ft. and my boot sank through the entire snowpack to the ground at 930 am. The snow cover was shallow (HS = 0-85cm) and wet throughout. It became unstable by mid-morning.

Above 9000 ft. the overnight freeze was better. East aspects thawed early in the heat and the sun. By 11 am those aspects were becoming unsupportable and  I could trigger rollerballs. Northerly slopes became unsupportable by noon. I could trigger large rollers and small wet loose avalanches on northwest-facing slopes below 10000 ft. by 1 pm. The top 20-35 cm of snow was sluffing atop a very hard, thick melt-freeze crust buried underneath.

Dropping below 9000 ft. again afternoon, I triggered both small wet loose avalanches and huge rollerballs that gouged down almost the full depth of the wet, shallow snowpack.

Avalanche activity and shiny sun crusts at upper elevations in the afternoon make me think that upper elevations were also transitioning to wet snow.

Cornices are still hanging in there over some east-facing slopes.