Mt. Lola

Today we toured around the West Face of Mt. Lola in hopes of skiing one of the longer lines off the summit back towards Perazzo Meadows. Temps were cold in the valleys this morning with calm winds, but we noted significant flagging along ridge lines as we approached our intended area of operations. Conditions below treeline were calm and cold with trees still hanging on to snow from this last storm cycle, we measured approximately 15cm new snow from 1/7. On our tour up we did not notice any signs of instability below tree line. As we gained our first exposed ridge near tree line we encountered consistent moderate East winds with strong gusts with moderate amounts of ongoing wind transported snow. Snow texture changed and surface conditions had wide spread wind effect ranging from supportable to punchy and hallow feeling. The wind had scoured the ridge down to a rime ice layer and thin windslabs had begun to develop on the leeward side. Wind was moving snow at a steady pace in the near tree line elevations. Hand pits revealed easy failures, while isolating small pockets on kick turns in the skin track showed the slab to crack and fail. Due the the ongoing intensity of the wind we veered away from our original objective and opted to ski in the lower elevations. By the afternoon, winds had died down and temps began to rise to above freezing on West aspects. We noted warming surface snow, trees began to shed and our skins began to clump with moist snow. North aspects remained cold and unaffected by the slight warming. On our last run of the day we noted a natural wind slab avalanche that we had not seen in that location earlier in the day. This windslab was a size 1, naturally released and most of the crown had already been filled back in.

Mt. Lola

Quick report

Weather

Avalanche