Home > Trip Reports > January 12, 2017, Snoqualmie Pass

January 12, 2017, Snoqualmie Pass

1/12/17
WA Snoqualmie Pass
2925
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Posted by Charlie Hagedorn on 1/12/17 2:53am
A fun morning lap with Erik and Martin - his first dawn trip.

Easy skinning up the Phantom took us to just below the Slot entrance. Best snow was sheltered with open sky. Cold temps and clear skies appear to have dried the snow out even more.  Stellars were condensing out of the air in the parking lot, shimmering around us as we packed for home.

Wind effect was apparent above treeline, all beneath a layer of fluff. We opted to head home rather than push further into stiffer snow. Primary instability noted was shallow (~5-8 cm ) loose dry sluffs. We did descend past one apparently skier-triggered crown well below treeline in the Phantom path (~20cm, 5 m wide, 8 m run); it was a little surprising, as we hadn't seen any reactive slab until then.
That sunrise over Alpy photo, wow

EDIT: Forgot emojis aren't supported by this forum's character encoding scheme

Awesome to hear its still holding up, headed out tonight for full moon tour.

author=haggis link=topic=37579.msg152285#msg152285 date=1484248057]
Awesome to hear its still holding up, headed out tonight for full moon tour.



Saw some people skinning up towards the Chair peak divide as we skied out after dark. The snow was phenomenal on the slope above Source Lake. Headlamp skiing is fun in perfect pow!

Great morning out... I had not been out to sample the light fluffy stuff recently... this was way better than sleeping. Full moon was out in force - gorgeous orange moon set through purple sky. My 70mm lens on a 35mm sensor was no match.









Sleeping in lot 3 last night was so chilly we got a much later start after using the Tercel battery to power the Winnie's heater and bottles of water in my "cooler" for breakfast when the RV water pipe was frozen. Sunrise was indeed beautiful. We found 10-12" soft consistent old snow on a firm crust 4600-3000' on SW slopes.

My backpack sensor read 5 F both when we arrived at and left the Alpy lot. It was warmer above, with a small inversion. NWAC telemetry showed a low of 3F!

I didn't think you were in the dawn business these days!

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january-12-2017-snoqualmie-pass
Charlie Hagedorn
2017-01-12 10:53:43