Home > Trip Reports > February 6, 2006, Baker Forecountry

February 6, 2006, Baker Forecountry

2/6/06
WA Cascades West Slopes North (Mt Baker)
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Posted by curmudgeon on 2/6/06 6:05am
Baker finally provided some vis:

Steve Heathers photo

Our first line is in the picture, our second line was past the Nose (the white ridge at the right of the pic) and we finished with Little Alaska (in the background) and the Upper Hourglass (AKA, Alaska Amber).

The snow was generally chalky, and downright wind effected in some aspects, but still delicious. Very stable! Minor slough above 45 degrees.

The heat wave coming in tomorrow may change all this.  There is already an unskiable crust on anything that saw too much sun.  Northern aspects at higher elevations may be able to survive as skiable snow for a few days --  if the expected inversion is not too severe.

(Sometimes skinning needs augmentation)  ;D

http://media.admcs.wwu.edu/video/test/stills/web/skinning.jpg
wow! I wish I was in the BC at Baker today! I remeber that climb up Table last year when we were walking on rock and clibing over bushes. Sick photo!

So where exactly is this? Are you over near Herman or over closer to the Arm?
How did cornices look and where were they?
Any evidence of slides after Saturday's big day?
I was looking over old avy reports of the big slide in Rumble Canyon (99?) when a 10-15+ foot slab broke loose and, started thinking about how much snow got blown around in that big storm that came through.

There were cornices abounding wherever a ridge was sharp enough to grow one. We saw no spontaneous cornice activity, but you would probably see a bunch of this tomorrow, if the predicted warming materializes.

There had been a few major crowns, probably during or shortly after the Saturday wind. The biggest was on the Arm -- about a hundred feet across, but only about a foot deep.

The picture in my previous post was Table Mountain, at the South end of the Bagley Basin in Heather Meadows.

Nice shot, and good job getting out in the brief weather window. Sounds like the snow was similar to what we found at Snoqualmie in higher open areas on Sunday (woods below were a fair bit nicer, but it was all good skiing except where completely wind-stripped to rain crust). Oh well, all that is changing now, time to hope for a nice storm sometime next week...

ah, i hate being a weekend warrior.

looks like this weekend will have some nice corn on herman if the weather stays constant.

Matt throwing up some smoke...

Hey Tim, thanks for the great TR, complete with photo and snow details! I'm wondering if that is a partially covered avi crown in your photo, high up on the east end of Table?

Nice shot Toby!

Way to go, Toby!

Charles, no, that is a glide crack on the Chimney. It is always there early and late in the yesr.  This year, because of a few rain events, there are a lot of open and scarcely covered glide cracks in the Baker area that are usually covered with the snow depth we have.

A bit later three boarders and a skier did that line with a camera crew below.  The first boarder missed his entrance turn and slid into the crack.  Luckily he was able to catch onto the edge and extricate himself.  I am imagining that you might be able to slide down betweed the snowpack and the rock wall in a steep crack like that.  Scarey!

BTW -- on the far right of my shot you can see a sluff release caused by a tree load that ran nearly to the valley floor, but it did not propegate, did not step down, and scoured only the top few inches in its path.

Thanks to Tim for the help with posting pics and the storage space. I thought I would add that I am still concerned about large natural slides happening. The forcasted warm spell may be a blessing in disguise. It is a haunting familiar situation to Feb. 14, 1999. I am remembering roughly 300" of new snow in a month (this year it was in Jan.). My wife and I had just passed the lower arm traverse to get half a dozen turns, when we turn around and witness the "big one" from start to finish. We saw a man we had just passed on the traverse and said "hi" to, go under the massive blast. It was surreal to say the least. This past weekend I kept thinking of the similarities, and skied accordingly in this area. Interesting enough, Matt and I saw many natural releases that had occured previously further out the Arm toward Shuksan, but at similar elevations to that which get skied regularly. These ranged from an estimated 2 feet to 20 feet deep. The largest one had started smaller from above, cascaded over a cliff, and triggered a release of full depth snowpack on a sloping bed of rock. Some blocks left over on the rock looked to be 20 feet deep, or more. Let's hope this warm spell triggers some big ones with no one around or settles that huge amount of new snow. To use someone else's analogy, it's like a crazy aunt living in the basement, you just don't know when she's going to crack....

I may finally get to escape the confines of the cubcile and the baby room for a day on Friday....any updates on snow conditions around 542 would be mucho appreciated!  Thanks.

D

The snow in the backcountry near Mt. Baker has turned difficult to ski on most exposures. Difficult breakable crust except on shaded north exposures.  Up to at least 5400 feet. Today, it wasn't quite warm enough to soften it except on steep southern exposures.  If it got a little warmer then south slopes would be fine till late in the day.

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curmudgeon
2006-02-06 14:05:59