Early season snow pack observations...

I was out hiking with a friend yesterday (she didn't have her skinning gear so I left mine behind too) and we made it up to the top of Heliotrope Ridge. The snow was incredible and the navigation was easy if you know where the summer trail is. There were a lot of skiers getting the best October pow turns that I've seen in a while.

At one point on the hike up (both of us in mountaineering boots) I noticed the snow sounded unusual and tried to distinguish the difference between squeaky styrofoam snow and whumping collapsing layers. I decided that it was the first of those two. My partner spooked a little when we saw skiiers descending above us while we were hiking and a little further on we both talked about the snow. I dug a hasty pit down the to frozen corn summer snow and isolated a block that was about 2x2x2 feet. I patted the top once with two gloved hands and the block crushed a bit. I pulled lightly from the back again with two gloved hands and found a shear layer 6-8" down. I cleaned the snow off the top and repeated on the base and got another shear layer just above the summer corn.

After digging the quick pit we continued on to our objective, the top of the ridge where you can look over at Colfax and the Twin Sisters range, and could feel the bottom 2 inches crush under the boot with every step as it was weighted.

This test was done very quickly just to see what the snowpack looked like and I only write this as a reminder to be aware of the snow even though there isn't much of it yet and also to open up the discussion to what people are seeing in other places. Usually my early season concerns are rocks, not avalanches but my view of the mountains develops every time I'm in them.