Salmon La Sac

A warm, rainy morning turned into a pleasant, overcast afternoon with warm temperatures. The Salmon La Sac area still lost a lot of the snowpack with the warm temps and rain, but there is still enough coverage on the roads for snowmobiling. Multiple wet avalanches were visible in steep terrain. These likely ran during peak rain and warming. I also had to be cautious of areas of standing water on the road and blowouts across the road from the flooding of smaller tributaries. 

I observed both Wet loose and wet slab avalanches that likely ran over Dec 4-5.

In the eastern portion of the valley near Sasse Ridge, there was around 6" of slush at 2400ft. This was fairly consistent to around 3500ft. After 3500ft, the snowpack quickly increased to around 15" by 4800ft. The entirety of the snowpack is saturated with water, although you can still decern a melt-freeze crust down 10". Below the melt-freeze crust, the weak, faceted snow from November is also wet. 

Snow depths increase as you travel west in the Cle Elum River Drainage. However, boot penetration is still down to the ground in the wet snowpack.