Quick report
We toured up to Peak 2 today to check out some of the recent avalanche activity in the State Park and to see how the snowpack was adjusting to the weekend loading event. On Peak 2, we found about a foot of recent snow sitting on a precarious setup of crusts and facets.
While lower elevations may be healing more quickly with the warmer valley temperatures, upper elevations are staying cold, and the facet layers at 3,500' were still dry, bouncy and reactive. The overall structure of the snowpack seems particularly weak, and we had unstable ECT results in both of our test pits; one failing on a sun crust/facet layer at 30 cm ↓, and the other failing on our old friend, the December facets.
Below-freezing temperatures, cloudy skies and the ever-present State Park winds had helped keep snow surfaces cold up high, but as soon as the sun came out around 2 p.m., things warmed up quickly. By the time we left our snowpit location at 3,500', the southerlies were starting to show some moisture in the top few centimeters of the snowpack. Back at the trailhead, it was full-on spring skiing, and a HawaiianT-shirt would have been an appropriate outerwear choice.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 23-35
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- N/A
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Scattered clouds for most of the day. Winds tapered from moderate gusts in the morning to 15–20 mph gusts around noon. Conditions ranged from puffy jackets on the ridgetops to T-shirt-and-shorts weather at the trailhead.
Snowpack
We dug two pits on a west-facing slope today at 3,500 feet on a subridge below the summit of Peak 2. The overall structure between the two pits was similar; we found advanced dry depth hoar at the base and several crust layers throughout the snowpack. These crust layers had facets present both above and below, which produced propagating results in our ECT tests.
Snowpit #1 had propagating results on a facet layer below a sun crust that formed prior to the most recent loading event about 30 cm down. Snowpit #2 was in a slightly shallower spot and failed on what appeared to be the December facet layer. In general, at the elevation where we dug these pits, the facet layers were still relatively dry. Impressive, given the westerly aspect and the strong springtime vibes at the trailhead about 1800' below where we dug.
Snowpit #1:
HS: 100 cm
Elevation: 3,550 ft
Aspect: 254° (W)
ECTP26 @ 30 cm ↓
Snowpit #2:
HS: 90 cm
Elevation: 3,560 ft
Aspect: 260° (W)
ECTP14 @ 52 cm ↓