Paddy/Panacea Peak

We skied the pocket glacier to the east of Paddy/Panacea peak because weather from the north often brings more snow to the Powder Valley area than White Pass. 30cm of low density new snow sits on on the ground bellow tree line make for an easy approach up the road, but descending at the end of day the was hazardous to skis and knees. The alpine is highly wind affected, wind exposed terrain has been stripped down to the ground in many places and supportive, hard windslabs in lee terrain were wumphing under the weight of a skier. We saw several recent small loose and slab avalanches on north through east aspects on the approach. We were concerned about triggering windslabs from bellow as we gained the Paddy Peak moraine and so we cautiously chose supported terrain and minimized our exposure to steeper slopes overhead and terrain traps. We found good turns on the glacier with 20cm of settling new snow and an average snow-depth of around 120cm. If you are thinking about heading out that way take a look at the winds recorded at the Mt Anderson weather station on the YAA website, strong south winds could things dramatically change things for the worse.

Several old loose snow avalanches had released out of steep rocky terrain and gathered significant mass in the runnout. One 48-72hr old size 1.5 slab avalanche was observed on steep, north-facing, wind-loaded feature at around 1700m (see photo)

Up to 30 cm of low density snow sits on the ground below tree line . The snowpack is highly wind effected in the alpine with wind exposed terrain scoured down to the rocks, and pockets of hard windslab supportive to a skiers weight in lee terrain, 20-30 cm of setting storm snow can be found in sheltered terrain. Snowpack depth was around 120cm on the glacier.