Snow loaded trees

Played at alpy today, the trees are so heavy with snow they are falling over and breaking in weird ways, with out any wind. It was sorta scary. A windy day right now would be way scary!

Yup, it's nature...

www.wta.org/signpost/remembering-don-hanson

I am sure several readers met Don at High Camp. We are headed up today. He was a truly great guy.

I took a tree bomb to the dome on Wed. night and despite wearing a helmet I still had a throbbing headache that didn't go away until the middle of the next morning. The size of the chunk that hit me wasn't much bigger than a segment of your average snowman but it was rock solid and didn't break up at all after bouncing off my head.

Wow, imagine if you weren't wearing your helmet. Of all the snow related objective hazards, tree bombs are the most difficult to evaluate and avoid. Short of staying away from trees altogether whenever temps rise.

yup, rising temps at higher elevations were causing some big dumps today.

Yup, it's nature...

Yes, but what happened in the last month was not characteristic for the crest, at least at Snoqualmie Pass. In December and the first part of January trees up here held a higher volume of snow for a much longer period of time then usual due to lower than average temperatures, following an unusually dry Spring and Summer mostly devoid of rain. As a result there is more dead fall than usual.