Quick report
After debating a few minutes between hiking and skiing, I decided on hiking and left the trailhead for about 1.5 hours at about 1:30 pm. I saw a single set of ski tracks and initially regretted my choice, until a few moments later, when I ran into the skier. His opinion was that boots were the better choice for the day. It was pretty thin everywhere that I observed. There were deeper pockets on the NW faces due to wind deposition, but all in all, there were many obstacles including rocks, stumps, small streams, and bushes. I did not find any old snow in these locations. I only saw the relatively new snow, which was fairly low density.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 30's
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- 7-15
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Mostly cloudy day with light winds. Colder than expected.
Snowpack
On the road, there was 7-10 cm of fairly fluffy new snow near the trailhead at about 8000 ft and 13-15 cm near the high point of 8200 ft. I dug in the snow on NW slopes at both elevations and found HS 25-35 cm at 8000 ft and 30-35 cm at 8200 ft. At 8200 ft, the snow was F resistance with 4F in the bottom 3 cm. At 8000 ft, the snow at this particular location was subject to NE winds, and there existed a 1F brittle crust of 5-6cm in depth, below which was F, then the last 1 cm was 1F. While there was some evidence of NE winds, there was much more widespread evidence of SW winds. Red Lake is still very much a lake. Streams that cross the road were still running.