November 25, 2011, Snoqualmie Pass

Very fun, and bluebird. Great to meet Matt, who gamely trudged all day on snowshoes. Skiing with boarders presents plenty of pow photo possibilities.

Top ~inch of the new snow was soft graupel, which skied well even after sunhit. Wslopes had thin crossloaded windslab (N to S), top 3" plated out occasionally with variable propagation, but elsewise nothing moving.

author=Charlie Hagedorn link=topic=22472.msg96017#msg96017 date=1322270802]
Very fun, and bluebird. Great to meet Matt, who gamely trudged all day on snowshoes. Skiing with boarders presents plenty of pow photo possibilities.

Top ~inch of the new snow was soft graupel, which skied well even after sunhit. Wslopes had thin crossloaded windslab (N to S), top 3" plated out occasionally with variable propagation, but elsewise nothing moving.

What a great day.  Thanks to Silas and Charlie for going out with me.  Lets keep our fingers crossed and hope this new system is not as warm as they predict. 

Alpy lived up to expectations today -> circus and good snow! 

The buried rain crust caught me a couple times, but the 8-24" deep pockets made up for it.  First tracks on a pillowy line down Felsen were pretty sweet.

As of noon no one had bothered to walk out of edelweiss, but that looked to be changing soon with the masses standing around at the top of chair 2...

Nice to run in to you all today. CharlieP and I started the day heading for the Kendall Stumps for a lap. Then we gained and crossed the ridge into Commonwealth where we caught up with Silas et al.

author=trees4me link=topic=22472.msg96023#msg96023 date=1322273892]
Alpy lived up to expectations today -> circus and good snow! 

There was a weak crust layer beneath the snow that fell overnight. Beneath that later the snow was surprisingly unconsolidated. Above that layer there was often a LOT of graupel--sometimes it seemed to make up most of the new snow. Very cohesionless. We skied the north backcountry and were surprised by some of the hard lumps lurking beneath the smooth surface. The skiing was often nice, but also could be pretty rough, if you hit one of those lumps.

I did an extended column test about half-way out to Piss Pass and couldn't get anything to fracture. The snow just got crushed as I tapped harder. But there were a lot layers that were hard to figure out. Trail breaking was often pretty slow. We saw and triggered no slides.

Fun day skiing. Saw lots of old friends. Met several new folks. I figure the rain this weekend is a good thing, since it will help settle the base.

Thanks for the good description of the layers. I was getting exercise at tracked out Hyak and didn't do anything more than pole tests. It certainly felt as you describe. The crust was supportive but not especially strong.

Thanks for the snow descriptions! gkf/nwac

Here's a little video of Ed skiing some bumps just East of Lower International.  Great snow where there wasn't any avi chunks buried.


Ed skiing, and a little flying...

Is it true?  Did I see a video of Crispin skiing with fixed heals?

author=Seth link=topic=22472.msg96103#msg96103 date=1322423698]Crispin skiing with fixed heals?

He might not pick them up all day, but he COULD.

Hyak pillows http://www.flickr.com/photos/koelle/