Home > Trip Reports > January 3, 2010, Snoqualmie Pass

January 3, 2010, Snoqualmie Pass

1/3/10
WA Snoqualmie Pass
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Posted by silaswild on 1/3/10 8:52am
What a difference 3 degrees make, especially when they are near freezing!  Nice dry powder was falling above 5000'. Unfortunately it was falling onto wetter powder from yesterday, and the slight cooling seemed to make for safer conditions than trumpetsailor reported.

What a difference a day makes, tho I'm not sure why the rain yesterday attracted such a crowd. Skiing varied considerably with altitude and timber.  Open glades above 4500' had slightly heavy boottop powder, in the trees the powder was only a couple inches, both on a supportive crust. Below 4000' the crust was pesky, grabbing randonee tips while allowing our telemark bretheren to glide, but not quietly. 

Best day of the second decade of this millenium so far! 
Fine day out! Whumphs today were confined to steeper open slide paths above 4.5k - just stable enough to make us think about skiing them, talkative enough to make us worry.

Also of note - one of us triggered a whumph that propagated uphill and caused a windlip under the other to settle.

The good snow at elevation more than made up for the breakable crust below.

We toured up the phantom on Sunday.  Went to the pass instead of going all the way up to the top of the slot.  Everyones pretty much got conditions down:
Above 4600' was fun, soft, not too heavy
Below was increasingly awful, with ice, wet snow, buried breakable crusts...

Dug a quick pit at ~5000-ft, SSE aspect, 32 deg slope, glades at treeline.  Most noticeable layers were at about 18" down (rain crust, mostly rounds) and about 30" down (p-hard xmas crust).  CT5 Q2.5 at 4" down on a very faint layer (probably rain), CT13 Q3 at 18", CT15 Q3 at 30".  ECT revealed no propagation.  SS was easy at 18".  We avoided large open slopes and stuck to the trees and ridges, did not notice any instabilites on the way down (even with a couple 15-20-ft drops).

We lapped from 5400 (pass) to 4600', then fought our way down a new-route (to us) to the car.  Ended up going through some fun cliff bands before crossing the SFSnoq just above the upper parking lot.  Overall a good day.


Thanks for the reports. I had no partner as of 8am so I went up to Alpental and rode lifts. Waiting for chair 1 to open a very nice patrolman approached me and told me that Elevator had slid to the first December rain crust and there was a debris pile 25 feet deep at the bottom, and that the skiers left of Elevator was ready to go so I should stay out of the BC (do I look like a guy who would duck a rope?)  ::)

Up top there were large crowns running ridge to ridge. Looks like the control session was sensitive and successful...thanks for that. Anyhow, the skiing on the lower mountain was awful, but up top it was hazy sunshine with blue breaks, no wind, cool, and big soft powdery bumps, freshies in the stash spots, and for the handful of us up there, we had it all to ourselves.  A great day at Alpental!

Glad you got out for a good day of riding!

Looks like we are both stuck in the wrong year...  It's 2010, not 2009 like we BOTH put in our TR subject!

Aaron, that's really interesting intel.  We were certainly concerned about both layers, and the slabs seemed cohesive but didn't propogate.  Elevator and the Alpy BC should mostly be in the lee during the last event, which is one of the reasons we headed where we did...

We did run into a couple of guys that headed up to the top of the slot, but they were also wise to the conditions and didn't venture down that lee side.

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january-3-2010-snoqualmie-pass
silaswild
2010-01-03 16:52:40