Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
(Collective sigh) What a relief! Things felt a little drastic there for a bit but we are 100% back in the game. The lodge snow stake is over 2', everything was looking fat in a fresh coat of white and some cautious skiers were very happy today. What a hectic storm cycle, with flooding, power outages, and ultimately about 2' of snow and 2'' of SWE for upper elevations of Hatcher Pass. It looked like the State Park was even gauging conditions to open a sled corridor to the Willow side (fingers crossed). Was great to see everyone working together and reinvigorated with a love for the mountains.
A couple of large natural avalanches were observed on the east and west aspects of Marmot that speak to the strong winds and overloaded weak layers. These likely ran during the height of instability yesterday. A cooling trend, supportable snow off trail, and sings of settlement all reinforced the appearance and of increased stability since the storm departed. Aspects we were easily able to trigger yesterday were unreactive and dense.
Moving forward I'll continue to take it easy but really I'm celebrating what feels like the return of winter.
Some quiet, isolated collapsing on a shallower, softer east aspect around 3200'. Otherwise, no instabilities were observed.Weather
- Air Temp
- 11
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Rain Elevation
- 1500'
- Recent Snowfall
- 30
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Cold, clear, crisp, and bright! Absolutely beautiful morning at the pass after a week of unsettled weather. Temps were stable near 10° throughout our tour but conditions were at times bitter with a slight southerly breeze. Some light flagging (wind transport) was observed along ridgetops around mid-day. As the afternoon approached, high clouds moved back in and were contributing to flattening the light.
Snowpack
The snowpack just went through a solid growth spurt, with the total depth gaining about a foot at mid-elevations and likely much more in select upper-elevation terrain. Our biggest goals today were to observe for any recent natural avalanche activity, and get a general feel for the snow underfoot. Today, the snowpack felt stable and supportable but evidence of yesterday's instabilities was apparent. Large natural avalanches on both east and west aspects of Marmot confirmed what we'd been expecting these last few days, strong winds were working to load slopes and overload previously buried weak layers. We dug a snowpit on upper elevation east facing slope on lower Hatch to have a look at the structure and the potential for finding a persistent slab in this location. What we found was indeed poor structure, with relatively strong new storm snow sitting on weak faceted snow. Tests proved confirmation of the apparent stability though with strong and resistant compression results and no propagation in our ECT.