Mission Ridge, inbounds pre-season

Snow coverage is excellent for this time of year in the Wenatchee Mtns. Overall, the snowpack is dry, cold, and "right-side-up," getting progressively harder with depth. It was surprisingly supportive to skis for being so early in the season. 

The height of snow increased with elevation:

6,240ft: 105cm

6,000ft: 80cm

5,600ft: 60cm

5,000ft: 50cm

 

15cm of light recent snow rests settling storm layers from earlier in the week. A 4-Finger+ layer from warm mid-November storms tops the early November crust (11/10?) which is ↓35cm below the surface. This is the upper of two stout crusts in the lower snowpack formed from early season rain events. 

We consistently found the two stout crusts in the snowpack, at about mid-snowpack and in the lower 1/4. The upper crust (11/10 or early November) was very smooth and ranged 30-45cm below the surface. The lower crust (10/30?) was even thicker and was ↓65cm or ~15-30cm off the ground. Both were fully frozen, more than Pencil hard, and had slight weak layers below them. The early November crust has been responsible for a few recently reported avalanches.

 

We dug a profile at 6,000ft, NNW:

Tests showed some consistency with observed cracking and recent avalanches on the 11/10 crust. However, small collumn tests did not correlate, and they produced sudden test results below both crusts

HS 91cm, HST 14cm

Boot Pen 37cm, Ski Pen 18cm

77cm: Easy compression tests and moderate shovel tilt tests consistent with bonding storm interface (CTE 5(PC))

46cm: 11/10 interface on P+ hard crust. Moderate shovel tilt results, notably planar and smooth. Correlates with cracking and triggerred avalanches.

41cm: Moderate, sudden small collumn tests (CTM 19(SC) under the 11/10 crust on very small (0.3mm) rounding facets

18cm: Hard, sudden small collumn tests (CTH 22(SC) on small (0.5mm) rounding facets, below the lower crust (10/30?)

See profile image below