Home > Trip Reports > Dec 7, 2011, N. Chair Peak

Dec 7, 2011, N. Chair Peak

12/7/11
WA Snoqualmie Pass
5509
4
Posted by Andy Hill on 12/8/11 2:27am
A quick tour into upper Chair Peak basin and over the climbers up to the north slope.  Huge tempeture variants in snowpack (20F top 22cm, 28F at 40cm) is working some subsurface trouble.  Current 8cm windslab holding things down, but was getting Q1/2 shear at 22cm with strong slab properties.  Watch out for warming.   Took a easy down to Snow Lake it what could have been no less than 2 dozen tracks.   Wow, folks are getting out.  Beautiful tracks off W. Chair Summit and Roosevelt.  So many routes, so little daylight...
Thanks for the conditions update.  How's Snow Lake looking, well frozen?

We skied the mogul/crust run down the north face on Sunday.  There was a well established skin track across Snow Lake.

Thanks for the observations AndyH!

Few questions:

What procedure did you use to observe the snowpack temperature? ( Ice water normalised thermistor? )
Aspect/elevation of obs?
Any chance you could sketch out or describe a quick snow profile?

Ask and ye shall receive.  Here's what the Chair looked like, the snowpit site, and the snowpit results.  Used a digital thermometer and only focused on top layers.  I'm pretty sure there was some faceted layer around 22cm, but boy that's a tricky thing to find/see.  North Aspect, 5,400 Feet, 35 degree slope:

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dec-7-2011-n-chair-peak
Andy Hill
2011-12-08 10:27:16