January 22, 2006, Silver Peak

Did you start out from Hyak?  Cass and I saw a few people leave just before we did.  We assumed they were going to Mt. Catherine, as we were, but never saw them again.  In fact, almost amazingly, we appeared to be the only ones on the mountain yesterday - we didn't see anyone to or fro.  

As you mentioned, the forecast was most certainly wrong; it was 32-degrees as we approached the pass and 40-degrees when we got off the mountain.  I've skied worse conditions within the last few weeks, but it was certainly heavy.  If we weren't aided greatly by Saturday skiers having made an enduring uptrack, bailing would have been a supported option.  As it was, however, we stuck it out.  

The snow was a bit sketchy - I don't know that I would have wanted to ski it had we been out of the trees.  There was a considerable layer (~10-15") consolidating on top of a rain crust.  As it moved somewhat easily, we chose to stay off the steeper, more open stretches.  I look forward to some between-layer bonding this week.

Did you start out from Hyak?

Yup. I'm glad we turned around where we did, things seemed to get worse as the day wore on. Taking a look at my weather graphs from NWAC the summit (3800') and the alpental (5400') stations all read at or below freezing all day yesterday. Must have just been a localize inversion or something funky.

The warm-up in the temps. Sunday in the Silver Pk/Mt. Catherine vicinity was quite noticeable; Skip and I had started out from Hyak in snow flurries, but by the time we got back to Hyak we were skiing down in drizzle (though the snow above ~4,200-ft seemed slightly less heavy)...
Saw a couple ~8-to-10" high crowns at steep convex rolls in the forest on Mt. Catherine; looked like the small slabs had been skier/boarder triggered somewhat recently at those locations, though the slides were quite minimal in extent...

As Skip mentioned, we've sure skied worse snow in the past few weeks...fortunately, skiing amongst the old trees on Mt. Catherine made the trip worthwhile...

We were across the highway, skiing out of Gold Creek on Saturday.  It was also much warmer than we expected - the temperature difference between the top and bottom of our runs was big... the snow was baking down at 4000ft, despite what the telemetry showed for that day - the filtered sunshine and fog was like an oven I guess.  Snow in the open was gloppy, but in the forest it was powder.
We also triggered a small 12 inch slab on a steep roll.