Dirtyface

We went out today to troubleshoot the Dirtyface weather station. Unfortunately, that goal remained significantly out of reach. The trails were groomed yesterday (12/20) for the first time this season, and we thought that would provide an excellent opportunity for this mission. However, the 10cm of snow overnight brought down many, many more trees. It was astonishing knowing that the grooming crews did all that work yesterday, grooming and cutting downed timber, only to have a full reset today. We counted at least 25 trees, about 3/4 of which we cleared with a handsaw before a fellow snow enthusiast showed up with a chainsaw. 

After leaving the groomed trail to begin the climb, we encountered deep trailbreaking. We realized we were quickly losing the race against the Solstice sunset. We dug a quick pit there to look at the snowpack and spun our sleds around to head back to the truck. There will be days like that sometimes. But we can celebrate the return of light and winter conditions. 

Snow surfaces were moist to wet by the end of the day below 2500ft. Above that, the snow surfaces stayed cold and dry. Although we were never in direct sunlight, we expect surfaces in the sun saw more warming today. 

At 3800ft, we found 95cm of snow in a hasty pit. The upper 45cm of snow is all recent storm snow, increasing in hardness with depth. We found a few storm interfaces within this upper snowpack, but snowpack tests were unremarkable. We found a thin layer of unfrozen melt forms 45cm deep. The base of the snowpack is a 20cm thick layer of moist/wet melt-forms over the ground. 

The biggest takeaway for us today was how much deeper the snowpack was than we anticipated. The 180-degree turn from warm rain to an average winter snowpack was rapid and thorough.