Galena Peak

This was a quick dusk patrol bop to keep an eye on steep slopes in the alpine. It is a real mixed bag of surfaces out there! We are ~2 weeks out from snowfall, and it shows. But fear not, my friends! The coverage is excellent, the snowpack supportable, the travel easy, and there is still a lot of soft snow to be found, though it does require some searching. The peak of wet snow problems was over a week ago and last weekend was warm enough for good skiing on big alpine solars. It's been harder to line that up this week. As observed in many places, surface faceting is most advanced below the level of previous inversions, but is occurring everywhere. There have been many nights of surface hoar growth and it is accumulating as large, multi-phase crystals in deep piles down in the valley bottoms. There was a lot more SH formation going on last week, somewhat less this week. Surfaces on alpine solars are a mix of icy-smooth and very rough; in many areas we are developing broad surfaces resembling small nieve penitentes (see photo). The very rough surfaces will be a great surface for future storms, the smooth ones not so much. Slopes on the shady side of the compass have taken quite a beating from the extended northerly wind events (which haven't been captured particularly well on weather stations); here you'll find a mix of very soft and silky near surface facets and stiff, slippery, hard slab/wind board. With lots of middle ground breaker in between. In places, the upper elevation rain crust from the solstice is exposed at the surface and presents a slide-for-life hazard. This is isolated, but worth paying attention to if you're playing in big terrain. Carrying something sharp (crampons for boots or skis) is nice for cold climbs on icy crusts. Even though the snow has taken a good baking over the past two weeks of sun, it's worth remembering it is still January and mountain temperatures have just not been that warm. You don't have to get far out of direct radiation to find softer snow. Alpine E and W are largely uncooked (though heavily wind-affected in many places). If you drop to very low-angle E and W at middle elevations, you can also escape crusts. Shaded slopes at all elevations observed have not come anywhere near melting. Crust+facet combos on the solar margins are ugly and would make "good" weak layers if buried in their current state and present difficult skiing. I found my best turns of the day on an upper elevation W aspect. Very minor cracking in the most recently deposited batch of thin hard slabs. This occurred infrequently. I attached a photo of the most pronounced cracking, which occurred after I had undercut the micro-slab at a kick turn. No other signs of instability.

Galena Peak

Quick report

Weather

Avalanche