Quick report
New snow! After three weeks without snow and a generally drought-ridden start to the season, even a couple inches of light density snow is a weclome holiday gift. After the snow tapered off, today brought settled weather to the pass. I took advantage of this lull before the next round of impending winds to make my way up to Hatch Peak and April Bowl to see if the new snow improved skiing conditions at all.
For slopes that started out scoured or stripped to begin with, this dusting of new snow did little to improve travel. On westerly and north facing slopes where previous winds have packed most of our seasons snow, old firm slabs provide a slideable surface for a few linked turns.
On the ascent I observed some small cornices and light drifting just below ridgeline. These were both soft and generally unreactive. On the slope in April Bowl, I found the new snow to provide a little extra texture and resistance, but observed no instabilities, even on the old, firm slabs from earleir in the month.
This is all very likely to change rapidly with strong winds rattling the DawgHouse as we speak.
No instabilities observed.Weather
- Air Temp
- 12
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Recent Snowfall
- 5
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Beautiful day with gorgeous afternoon light. Temps were mild compared to what we've been used to and winds were calm to light out of the west for the majority of my stay. The best part was the new snow. Although 2 inches of light-density snow wasn't quite enough to drastically improve the ski conditions, it sure did a good job of improving morale and making the place look a little more wintry.
Snowpack
About 2 inches of new snow fell overnight Friday 12/26 into early Saturday. For the most part, this new snow fell with only light effect from southeasterly winds. New snow was light density and appeared to be decently bonded to old snow surfaces. While I observed some light drifting and small cornice formation along the ridge approaching the weather station, drifts were soft, unreactive, and dropped cornices failed to propagate any instabilities lower on the slope.
Below the new snow, our old faceted snowpack remains. In gullies and lee-side terrain features, this new snow fell on old, firm windslabs created by extreme winds earlier this month. While I didn't observe any instabilities on these layers today, another round of extreme winds headed our way could change this situation rapidly.