January 10, 2013, - Phantom to top of Slot - bad
1/10/13
WA Snoqualmie Pass
5081
10
Went up with the intention to ski the Slot. 4-8 inches of nice light snow on manky crusty. Bonding was poor, but upper layer had no cohesion at the moment, so no real avy danger other than light sluff and plenty of that.
Hard going, sidehilling on even a gentle slope caused fresh to slide out and ski and skin to chatter. Switched to postholing for last ~1000 ft. Went about 10 steps down the Slot to evaluate, same stuff, dust on crust. Louder Powder. Skinned up Phantom because the going in the trees was super super bad. Ski crampons would have been nice, hard to cut crust with skis but would not support foot travel.
Pretty sure if the upper layer had some cohesion within the layer things would get spicy fast.
Conditions call weekend plans into question
Hard going, sidehilling on even a gentle slope caused fresh to slide out and ski and skin to chatter. Switched to postholing for last ~1000 ft. Went about 10 steps down the Slot to evaluate, same stuff, dust on crust. Louder Powder. Skinned up Phantom because the going in the trees was super super bad. Ski crampons would have been nice, hard to cut crust with skis but would not support foot travel.
Pretty sure if the upper layer had some cohesion within the layer things would get spicy fast.
Conditions call weekend plans into question
thanks for the report!
author=jdclimber link=topic=26931.msg113513#msg113513 date=1357857625]
Went up with the intention to ski the Slot. 4-8 inches of nice light snow on manky crusty. Bonding was poor, but upper layer had no cohesion at the moment, so no real avy danger other than light sluff and plenty of that.
Hard going, sidehilling on even a gentle slope caused fresh to slide out and ski and skin to chatter. Switched to postholing for last ~1000 ft. Went about 10 steps down the Slot to evaluate, same stuff, dust on crust. Louder Powder. Skinned up Phantom because the going in the trees was super super bad. Ski crampons would have been nice, hard to cut crust with skis but would not support foot travel.
Pretty sure if the upper layer had some cohesion within the layer things would get spicy fast.
Conditions call weekend plans into question
Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks for putting in the boots pack and advising of the poor conditions in the Slot. We turned around shortly after meeting you and had a laughable decent back down the Phantom.
Thanks!
Thanks for the report. I just commented the conditions were very similar in bounds as well. Agreed that the weekend does not look as good as it once was. Also agree that some bonding and/or melting of the ice layer would be nice. Maybe too cold???
i think this is all an elaborate ruse to keep the herds from tracking up the slot couloir this weekend..... oh, and the whole kendall area is also probably really crappy too.
pretty much the same on the chair/bryant side, some goods were found, pretty variable dust on crust to 10"+ in spots. Anything steep had big debris piles at the bottom
Thanks for the update, I expected such might be the case. We were going to head up there tomorrow but think it best to do some ice climbing instead.
Sounds potentially nice for moderate-pitched open areas. Or am I just being hopelessly optimistic? I've often found fun tours/turns in such areas in times of dust-on-crust. Also wondering how things are up around Stevens which got more of a convergence effect in the last round of snow...
FWIW: On Wednesday night at Summit West I noticed sluffing of the fluff on the crust on short steep slopes (e.g. under the unloading station) -- a rare thing to see inbounds at Summit West.
There is some nice snow around Stevens especially on moderate slopes. We also found some quite good skiing on steeper lines if you pay attention to where the wind blew it. Stay out of the trees, unless you would like to see what WW3 frozen in time looks like.
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