Quick report
We nearly completed the entire tour de Seattle Ridge today. We rode out to the Seattle Creek Headwall, descended Seattle Creek until dense alders forced us to turn around at 1,000 ft, then looped back up and over to Main Bowl, Jr's, and the Seattle Ridge weather station. While the initial goal was to check out the Headwall for the first time this season, the day gradually turned into an obsessive hunt for hidden powder patches, none of which were found.
Wind has had a profound effect on snow conditions, and we encountered nearly every surface imaginable including rime crust, windboard, breakable crust, dust on crust, and sastrugi. There is no good way to sugarcoat it. Riding conditions were suboptimal and left much to be desired, and new snowfall will be needed to see meaningful improvement. We did find some sheltered, soft surface snow in the trees below 2,000 ft, but even there conditions remained dust on a crust.
We did not experience any signs of instability today. However, given recent winds, reactive and lingering wind slabs may still exist in steep mid and upper elevation terrain. On the Headwall, we observed one small crown in a steep rocky area that likely released naturally sometime within the past week. The entire face was visibly scoured, though small loaded pockets remained in steep rocky chutes.
Cornices are also quite large along many sections of Seattle Ridge, so we gave these features plenty of space. With slight warming expected in the coming days and full sun exposure, south facing aspects could slightly soften and offer almost springlike conditions where surface texture is more uniform. While we did not experience surface snow warming today, the views were excellent and the warmth of the sun made for an enjoyable day out.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Clear skies and mostly calm winds set the stage for the day. The sun was out in full force, and even though it wasn’t exactly warm, we could definitely soak up a little of its warmth.
Snowpack
Although intense scouring made choosing a pit location difficult, we decided to examine a zone we had not dug into this season. We dug a snowpit on a southerly aspect at 3,000 ft near the Seattle Creek Headwall. The pit contained approximately 4.5 ft of snow. The upper snowpack consisted mostly of alternating crusts with newly faceted snow in between, along with old wind slabs. About 50 cm down, we found the December facet layer; in this pit, these facets were consolidated and stubborn. We observed no signs of instability in this layer or elsewhere in the snowpack.