Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Weather
- Air Temp
- 2 degrees
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Recent Snowfall
- 6 cm
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
We observed quite the inversion with warmer temperatures (high teens) above 5800 ft, but frigid temps (single digit temps) below this elevation. Anything that was moist flash froze as we descended into colder air below. Snowfall rates picked up by around noon as forecasted. Winds were generally light in this area, but noticeably stronger (and easterly) as we descended into the Hood River valley
Snowpack
Today my partner and I went to seek out shaded aspects above 6000 ft on the east side of the mountain to target a weak layer adjacent to the 1/4 crust. In a test profile on a NE aspect @ 6200 ft we observed an HS of 155 cm. The top 115 cm (almost 4 ft) of this was all new settled snow since January 4th. I generally observed a strong right-side-up structure above the 1/4 crust but still did find some 1 mm faceted melt forms just below the crust. Deep tap test produced sudden planer results on the 13th tap. This weak layer is too deeply buried to produce results with ECT's/CT's. Beyond deep tap tests, the upper snowpack produced unremarkable test results.
We were pleasently surpised to see all the new snow settle nicely. This made trailbreaking much easier. We did observe quite a bit of wind-affected snow, but these loaded pockets appeared stubborn.
Snowfall rates intensified by the time we were wrapping up our tour at noon.