Quick report
Photos below of the stark contrast between the dirty snow from Monday and the new snow, small push-a-lanche in Cardiac Bowl (below skier), and some of the wet activity pre storm in Mineral. Always too bad when we get these dirt layers as they mess up the late season spring skiing (and melt our snow quicker).
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Wet activity was not much of a problem in the AM given the cold night and cloud cover. However, things were starting to heat up as we left and we were able to initiate small push-a-lanches on steep east facing terrain starting around 11 am. Would imagine the normal wet loose activity common after these spring storms got going in the afternoon. However, given the shallow amount of new snow, and the very solidly frozen base, would imagine most of these to have been pretty easily managed in terrain without a lot of consequences. Maybe a bit more of this tomorrow, before the next storm cools things off. Probably the biggest hazard today was the rock hard brown snow in areas where the new snow had been scoured off. </p>
New snow settled to about 4 inches in most places. However, slope exposure to the post frontal NW winds played a huge role in whether there was any new snow left at all. The dust layer from Monday's strong SW winds is pretty drastic, and you can easily see where the NW winds scoured things down to the frozen brown snow. Looking across the canyon at the alpine ridge was not pretty, with upper White Pine, Red Pine, etc all having been scoured down to the brown. As long as you stayed on white snow, the skiing was pretty decent.