March 27, 2016, Snoqualmie Pass
3/27/16
WA Snoqualmie Pass
2912
3
A great day, made possible by an email from Seth and great forecasts/telemetry from NWAC. We placed a bet that early birds could get ahead of today's slab formation, and it worked.
At the car, we chatted about ruling things out, and Seth wanted to rule out , "skiing windslab" (I wholeheartedly agreed), so it went on the AvySticker.
Seth hadn't been up Snoqualmie before, so that seemed like the thing to do. Up the Phantom and emerged above the trees to find ~5 cm of new poorly bonded to the sun/warming crust, making skinning delicate. By 10 am, the precipitation had become largely graupel.
The Snoqualmie telemetry (OSOSNO) had suggested stout winds from the NW at the beginning of the storm, but we found almost no windslab on the SW side, nary a cross-loaded pocket.
Popped into the Slot as the storm picked up, with yesterday's tracks still apparent at the top, but uncertain slabbiness below. We nibbled turns down the skier's right side to the dogleg, where it became clear that a pocket of windslab on the left extended a peninsula into the choke. Discussion ensued, as it was so easy to justify risking the choke, and it looked very, very good. The AvySticker, and the ruling-things-out philosophy, shone in this situation. Ultimately, because we'd agreed to rule it out, and we wrote it down, we were able to turn away from the best snow we'd seen all day and boot upward. Without that agreement, I think we would've talked ourselves into risking the choke.
Mother Nature had other things in mind, though, as it turns out that she'd been dumping even better-quality snow on the Phantom, approaching boot-top by 3pm. Lap 1 was light blower and graupel, running loose dry. Lap 2 saw the beginning of storm-slab formation, cracking, and sluffs running far, one of which pulled out a storm-slab pocket ~10m wide, perhaps on the graupel 5cm above the suncrust. Neither of us had expected today to include light snow breaking over our knees.
At all elevations, below the ~2-4cm crust's surface, there's oodles of 4F soggy saturated snow.
At the car, we chatted about ruling things out, and Seth wanted to rule out , "skiing windslab" (I wholeheartedly agreed), so it went on the AvySticker.
Seth hadn't been up Snoqualmie before, so that seemed like the thing to do. Up the Phantom and emerged above the trees to find ~5 cm of new poorly bonded to the sun/warming crust, making skinning delicate. By 10 am, the precipitation had become largely graupel.
The Snoqualmie telemetry (OSOSNO) had suggested stout winds from the NW at the beginning of the storm, but we found almost no windslab on the SW side, nary a cross-loaded pocket.
Popped into the Slot as the storm picked up, with yesterday's tracks still apparent at the top, but uncertain slabbiness below. We nibbled turns down the skier's right side to the dogleg, where it became clear that a pocket of windslab on the left extended a peninsula into the choke. Discussion ensued, as it was so easy to justify risking the choke, and it looked very, very good. The AvySticker, and the ruling-things-out philosophy, shone in this situation. Ultimately, because we'd agreed to rule it out, and we wrote it down, we were able to turn away from the best snow we'd seen all day and boot upward. Without that agreement, I think we would've talked ourselves into risking the choke.
Mother Nature had other things in mind, though, as it turns out that she'd been dumping even better-quality snow on the Phantom, approaching boot-top by 3pm. Lap 1 was light blower and graupel, running loose dry. Lap 2 saw the beginning of storm-slab formation, cracking, and sluffs running far, one of which pulled out a storm-slab pocket ~10m wide, perhaps on the graupel 5cm above the suncrust. Neither of us had expected today to include light snow breaking over our knees.
At all elevations, below the ~2-4cm crust's surface, there's oodles of 4F soggy saturated snow.
Everyone wants the slot, myself included, but when the phantom skis well, it's a really good run
We found similar on Silver, Charlie:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/23557848@N03/sets/72157665921320540
We were down by 2:00PM and the storm was late in develpoing, so we only had a few inches of new on that big mass of wet grains, more in wind deposited pockets.
Today would be a good one, if I didn't have to work.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/23557848@N03/sets/72157665921320540
We were down by 2:00PM and the storm was late in develpoing, so we only had a few inches of new on that big mass of wet grains, more in wind deposited pockets.
Today would be a good one, if I didn't have to work.
The density significantly increased overnight and the snow this morning was much wetter than it was yesterday. I blame the fog, which certainly didn't improve the visibility much better than yesterday, either. Lots of tracks on the face of Hyak this morning, none of them mine.
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