Observation: NWAC Forecaster

Advanced Information

Weather Summary

Beautiful blue skies with just a few passing high clouds here and there. It was colder than we're used to in these parts, particularly in the shade. Luckily it wasn't too bad while moving and in the sunshine. On and near ridgelines in exposed areas, some gusts of wind picked up from time to time.

Avalanche Observation Comments:

No new avalanches were observed. Plenty of evidence of Friday's wet cycle

Snowpack Observations

Quick morning trip up the Alpental Valley before getting home to write the forecast. It was a choose your own adventure up the valley skin tracks to Source Lake. Then I climbed Chair Peak up past the thumbtack and over to the North Slope. Skied down to Snow Lake, then came up and over the divide. I was back at the car just after 12:00.

Saturday didn't deliver much snow, maybe an inch or two. In some areas, it was drifted a little deeper. On slopes that see direct sunshine, Friday's sun crust was widespread just below the new snow. It is breakable but sort of holds up under skis depending on your location. There's already faceting going on around the crust, and surface hoar was fairly widespread. There's plenty of wet avalanche debris, rollerballs, pinwheels, etc on these aspects as well. Overall, pretty beat up, but that inch or two really helped the travel conditions compared to what I found on Saturday morning in the next drainage over.

As I approached the ridgeline below Chair Peak, I was greeted by chilly winds. They were strong enough to be transporting snow, and there was cold dry snow on the more shaded aspects that we watched sift around. Looking up at the peaks, we could see plumes of snow from time to time as the winds picked up. Back on the ground of the North Slope, large drifts, textured surfaces, and other wind sculpturing were observed near ridgeline. As we descended, we found mostly settled powder, but did run into areas where Friday's breakable sun crust existed. Again, the slightest tilt of the compass from shady to sunny and you've got a crust to deal with.

Well off the ridgeline, the wind was still transporting snow and convex features were getting loaded. Again, actively blowing snow, textured surfaces, "fat" areas, and even a small crown or two were spotted. I decided to dig a quick pit on the dark side of one of these convexities where Friday's crust didn't exist to take a look at some layers of interest. The same interstorm layer that popped out yesterday over on Cave Ridge showed up again today. It was a few cms above the 1/27 interface and failed easy in all tests I performed.

Deeper in the snowpack, the 1/21 continues to show up with large stellars as the failure grain. In this location, I found it just shy of a foot below the surface. CT28, shovel shear, and tilt all confirmed it.

Deeper still, I may have had an encounter with the 1/18 50cm down. Haven't run into him in a while. We'll store that one away, it could be a one-off.

Of most interest to me was the top of the MLK crust after my findings on Saturday over on Cave Ridge. It looked similar today - its faceting and deep tap tests produced sudden results (DT18). Found it down 87cm from the surface and an ECT didn't produce any results.

The other observation of note is the amount of people out there today. Before we even started walking you could tell it was going to be a busy day. I decided to count my encounters and ended up with 248 people that I either walked or skied by. Said hello to a lot of them, tried to chat when I had time. That number doesn't include people I saw across the valley, in the parking lot, or at the other packed trailheads around the Pass. There are tracks everywhere and no avalanches spotted, so lots of slope testers giving direct feedback on those layers in question. Not a guarantee, but a useful bit of information for now.