Quick report
We rode to Lost Lake today via Primrose. There's just enough snow on the trail to cover some of the rocks and roots. There's about 3,5' of snow on the ground at 2,000' and plenty of soft snow. The wind was blowing from the south at the lake so there was some wind texture and stiffer areas on the surface, but still fairly easy riding conditions. The snowpack at 2,200' was very weak, and with a powerful storm coming in tonight, we expect natural and human-triggered avalanches will be very likely for the next few days.
There was a surprising lack of signs of instability, but it's tough to hear whumpf sounds from a machine. We did not see any recent avalanches either.Weather
There were snow showers this morning that cleared out by the time we got to the trailhead at 11am and skies were partly cloudy. South winds were blowing snow off the peaks through the day and there was a stiff breeze at Lost Lake. Temperature was 19 degrees at the Primrose weather station.
Snowpack
There was 1' (30cm) of snow at the trailhead with increasing depth as we climbed. At 2,200' there was 3.5' (110cm) of soft snow on the ground. We dug a few snowpits at this elevation on a north facing slope and found a similar structure that we have been finding across zones. There was about 1' (30cm) of snow on top of a thick layer of very weak facets. We got stable results in our tests (ECTN12 and PST 80/100END), but the structure is poor like it is everywhere else.