Jan 30, 2011, Snoqualmie

Jake and I headed up to Snoqualmie yesterday to find some of the new snow.  We skied a couple runs on west facing slopes.  From the top we found a couple hundred vertical feet of wind scoured bullet proof ice between rime covered rocks.  Below 5500 feet things improved.  Wind scouring on the upper slopes still limited the new snow accumulation to 5 inches or less of wetter powder.  This lay on top of a few inches of large grained, very wet rounds.  All this lay on top of the firm crust.  Skiing was quite nice through this, often floating above the crust. The rightside up profile of the snow on the crust had bonded quite well as compared to observations from Saturday.  From 4500 to 3500 the crust gradually lost strength and the depth of the newer overlying layers shrank.  Still turnable.  We had lots of fog all day and the sun never came out to directly effect the snowpack.  Several times we had to wait out the fog to get visibility to ski.  Where was the afternoon clearing?  It did seem warmer than predicted, near freezing or slightly below at all altitudes.  Wish I could get out Monday to see how this snowpack reacted to a cold night.  Don't think a crust will form and maybe it dried out even a bit.