Sweeney

This was a late-day tour to see how the storm was progressing and make a few wiggles in the fresh snow. On the drive to the trailhead, it was pretty quiet in the valley, with obvious snow clouds hanging over the mountains. As I ascended, I climbed into the weather. By 6,000' it was snowing steadily, and an inch or two of new snow had already piled up. By 7,000' I was in a serious winter storm, with heavy snowfall and strong loading winds moving tons of snow.

The most prominent layer in the upper snowpack is a widespread melt-freeze crust that formed on 3/7 and 3/8 during the heatwave, rain and greenhousing clouds. At 5,500', I found an inch of moist snow on this layer. As I climbed, the amount of snow above this (mostly snow from and after the cold front on 3/9) increased. At 6,500' there was 4-6" of snow above the crust, and by 7,500' there was 8-10". Poking into terrain leeward to the westerly winds I found dense wind slabs up 2 feet thick, averaging in the 12-18 inch range.