West Goat

It’s spring, and wet avalanches are basically the only thing on the menu—unless you get high into alpine northerly aspects where some dry snow and recent slab avalanches still exist. It’s been silly warm, both during the day and overnight, but the well-settled, partially transitioned upper snowpack hasn’t produced a steady stream of wet avalanches. Most that we’ve seen likely occurred early in the warm-up, when the snow was still fresh.

There are probably a few reasons we’re not seeing more activity, but the main one is simple: there isn’t much snow above the late March crust. On top of that, much of the season’s snowpack has already seen significant rain, and meltwater is draining rather than pooling above crusts.

Ski conditions were passable. Skinning was fast and efficient on a supportable, edgeable crust. The biggest drawback was that the overnight crust broke down quickly in direct sun, leading to grabby, somewhat unpredictable turns. True corn conditions may be on the horizon with cooler temperatures and more sun in the week ahead.

Valley bottoms have little to no snow cover looking east into the heart of the North Cascades. Spring traverses will likely involve more walking and bushwhacking, and less skinning and gliding, than usual. Cornices loom large—it’s easy to wander out onto a monster while trying to peek over the other side.

Clear skies overnight allowed for a superficial refreeze (ski supportable) despite low temperatures in the upper 40s.  The thin surface crust broke down immediately with direct sun.  20-30cm of crust , large melt forms and 1F moist rounded grains over the stout crust buried in late March.  Patches of snow in the forest at 4000 feet with skinning possible in opern terrain about 500 feet higher.