Home > Trip Reports > April 1, 2012, -- Snoqualmie Pass area

April 1, 2012, -- Snoqualmie Pass area

4/1/12
WA Snoqualmie Pass
2226
4
Posted by Randito on 4/1/12 2:41pm
Toured west facing old growth timbered slopes to about 5000 -- above that point, in the open, snow penetration became much deeper and my dog started postholing in the skin track and whining about it.  Snow on the descent was mix of heavy fresh snow, wind effected snow and increasing crustiness to 3500 ft -- below that it got heavier and wetter -- becoming gloppy at 2500.
Tia needs snowshoes! We (Don, Jeff) were up north of US2 with 2' of powder accumulated in the preceding 3-4 days. The trees between 4k and 5k were sweet, even after the sun started trashing the open slopes. Crust at 2' softened and disappeared at 4300'.

That was a blast! Very nice powder turns in the upper forest for April! On our second run after Tia guided you home, we made it up to more like 5200 or so by staying mostly in mature forest and trailbreaking was a tad easier than what we found as we broke into those open areas at the top of the first track. We dug some pits in the open area at 5000 and I felt a thin and not super hard ice crust at about 18", but did not get any shears on it. There was a layer down at about 2.5' where we each got clean shears, but not super easy shears (mine failed after I think 4 hard whacks from the shoulder on a shovel compression test). From both the pit tests and what we saw around our skin track and ski cuts it did not seem like there was a lot of energy in the snow above that deeper layer except in the top 6-ish inches up close to the ridge crest (and on wind rolls right at the crest near 5200 I saw a few tiny slabs of snow pop out under the track). We nonetheless decided to play it safe and stayed off bigger steeper open slopes and still had tons of powder fun in the trees.

Sorry, other than confirming the highway (I-90), no trailhead, drainage, or gps track for this report. Perhaps I'll post the one photo I took later, but it's of folks standing near the pits at our first high point so it will score low on the "stoke" scale. From recent threads, I know that there are at least a few members out there who still like to see this sort of report despite these glaring deficiencies  ;).

Thanks Randy.  I really appreciate these short and informative reports which help me decide where to ski based on wind, sun, and up to date snow conditions.  No need for anyone to share their personal secret stash with me, I respect their privacy. It would be great to have more folks share similar information, no worries about how unimportant or unimpressive the day was, and no need for extraordinary photos which sometimes slow the report rendering on our smartphones. 

Glad to hear you had all had FUN, that's the most important thing, eh?

It's all good. :)  Glad you had a good day out!

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april-1-2012-snoqualmie-pass-area
Randito
2012-04-01 21:41:41