Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Death, taxes, and wind and sun in the Wenatchee Mountains; these are the certain things in life. I took a walk to get a SWAG ob and morning sun instead of chasing deeper possibilities at the Cascade Crest. With the season's early upslope storms on SW flow, this part of the East Central zone is ahead of schedule for the date. Conditions on the ground matched the observed weekend weather and telemetry at Mission Ridge and Blewett Pass. W/SW winds from 14 DEC had wreaked havoc on the NTL and corridors with any fetch in the BTL, leaving behind a variety of crusts, sastrugi, settled powder, and pockets of cohesive, small wind slabs NTL. I found a skintrack that was, charitably put, terrible, before putting in my own which could politely be described as "not my best work," evading brush, logs, and widowmakers in the breeze. 4700' - start of skiable snow off the Nordic trails and meadows, but just barely. Plenty of wood, brush, and basalt remain exposed. At 4500', solar aspects were bare at the base of most trees. 5300' N - depositional, sheltered locale: HS 75cm; HST 15cm, clear wind deposition 5700' N - depositional, sheltered locale: HS 112cm; HST 35cm, clear wind deposition Pit notes: nothing monumental. ECTX in both locations on a 1F hard storm/wind slab over the most recent rain/Mf crust. HST of 15cm (5300') and 35 cm (5700'). The usual early (any?) season Wenatchee Mountains snowpack: wind affected cold snow over a Dagwood sandwich of crusts and weak grains in stages of faceting. 0 C at the bottom of the pack, -6C at the top, so facets rounding low and staying faceted high. It's only mid-December, so it's not hard to find a HS of 10-15cm of sun and wind-affected snow in the right places. Looks like Diamondhead caught the wind just right on 14 December for some quality leeward skiing. Weather was great: CLR, Calm gusting to light SW winds, no wind transport (or snow available to transport), no precip, -5C at 5300', -6 at 5700' Interestingly, along Highway 97 north, the 14 December SW flow favored Ingalls Creek, Etienne Creek, etc. zones and the Big Y, even at lower elevations. More snow, less wind, with inversion conditions and cooler temps in the shade.