South Lake

My goals today were to continue monitoring our wet loose problem and to try to get a sense of whether places that don't have recently drifted snow at the surface are becoming concerningly wet with today's warm temperatures. I traveled on foot to 10200' and put my boots on there.

Sunny, low-angle slopes were softening at the surface by 9:00 am, but ski penetration was minimal. As I gained elevation on northerly terrain, I found minimal softening. Around 10 am, I reached 11000' and found eroded surfaces that lacked any recent deposition to be firm and slick. I began to wrap onto east-facing aspects and found a rapid change. East-facing aspects were wet at the surface up to 12000' at 11:30 am. While all sunny slopes were wet at the surface, I only found concerningly wet/transitional surface conditions in places holding last week's drifted snow. I skied an east-facing aspect with awesome corn from 12000' back to 11000', then wrapped north to check in on any softening. By 12:00 pm, north-facing aspects had a ski penetration of less than 1cm and were generally still frozen solid. I skied increasingly soft, low-angle northerly snow down to 10200' and walked it out to the truck.

For the most part, our wet loose problem seems to be confined to only areas with recently drifted snow at the surface. On sunny aspects, the surface crust on these drifts is softening by 10 am, and the likelihood of triggering a small wet loose avalanche increases. I found good ski quality on softening old surfaces and was able to easily avoid drifted snow based on surface textures.

I found softening and transitioning to wet at the surface in recently drifted snow on east-facing aspects by 10 am. I did not find concerningly wet old surfaces; instead, I found favorable surface conditions in places that lacked recent drifts.