Quick report
It was hard to imagine when I left foggy, frosty Bend that I would have a warm and mostly sunny day out at Paulina. A testament to the importance to get out in the mountains and observe the conditions rather than making assumptions from home!
The high pressure has really done a number on our snowpack. At 7800ft I found snow depths of around 110 on northern aspects and only 65 on solar aspects (also many tree wells and steep, rocky solar slopes were melted to the ground). We are seeing the impacts of warm days and cool, calm nights in the snowpack. On solar aspects at 7800ft, I found a solid 4cm melt freeze crust with some faceted snow underneath. On a NE slope I found a 10cm layer of fist hard snow that had some signs of faceting ontop of a raincrust. Down closer to the lake level I found large surface hoar 2-4cm.
So what does this all mean... for now it means that we have a super variable snow surface that can make for some heads up riding. For the future it may lead to some uncertainty when it (hopefully soon!) gets covered by the next storm.