February, 19 Kendall Knob
2/15/06
WA Snoqualmie Pass
2364
3
It was a beautiful day to tour up Kendall Knob. We had a bit of trouble navigating through the forest, as some crazies set a steep skin track from the PCT that I eventually couldn't follow. Snow in the trees was maybe 5" of powder on a hard slippery crust. I had a hard time getting my skins to stick to this. Has anyone got any suggestions here? Maybe ski crampons? I felt like I couldn't go anywhere near as steep as I usually do. Did others experience this?
After we broke through the trees maybe 100vf below the false summit, we set a skin track across to the main ridge. The snow here was a slabby 2" on top of maybe 4" of loose powder. As I was skinning across the face, I kept creating these tiny 2'x6" 2" deep slabs. This made me uneasy, and we crossed that part as quick as we could. I think we found the NWAC's wind slabs. (Northwest exposure, maybe 4600'.) Did anyone else encounter these? Should I worry less since it was sitting on top of unconsolidated powder? (there would have been some fun skiing on these aspects.)
The rest of the ascent was uneventful, and we crossed to the windward side of the hill. We met a few folks on top, and gave them our slabby findings. From the top, the West aspects looked like a lot of fun, so we dug a hasty pit (5000', 30 degrees.) We found remarkably consolidated snow for the first 2-3" down to a strong rain crust (different than the snow we had encountered lower down on similar aspects.) I thought I'd do some shovel shear and tap tests, but every time I seperated my shovel size column, it slid about 1.5-2" down. I didn't even have to tap it. It seemed to be sliding well and creating a good shear. Needless to say I was troubled by these results.
We descended through the trees at the edge of the clearcut, down to the lower angle slopes below, and then had a blast the rest of the way down.
Here's a shot looking back up:
Lot's of fun and sun on a great tour.
After we broke through the trees maybe 100vf below the false summit, we set a skin track across to the main ridge. The snow here was a slabby 2" on top of maybe 4" of loose powder. As I was skinning across the face, I kept creating these tiny 2'x6" 2" deep slabs. This made me uneasy, and we crossed that part as quick as we could. I think we found the NWAC's wind slabs. (Northwest exposure, maybe 4600'.) Did anyone else encounter these? Should I worry less since it was sitting on top of unconsolidated powder? (there would have been some fun skiing on these aspects.)
The rest of the ascent was uneventful, and we crossed to the windward side of the hill. We met a few folks on top, and gave them our slabby findings. From the top, the West aspects looked like a lot of fun, so we dug a hasty pit (5000', 30 degrees.) We found remarkably consolidated snow for the first 2-3" down to a strong rain crust (different than the snow we had encountered lower down on similar aspects.) I thought I'd do some shovel shear and tap tests, but every time I seperated my shovel size column, it slid about 1.5-2" down. I didn't even have to tap it. It seemed to be sliding well and creating a good shear. Needless to say I was troubled by these results.
We descended through the trees at the edge of the clearcut, down to the lower angle slopes below, and then had a blast the rest of the way down.
Here's a shot looking back up:
Lot's of fun and sun on a great tour.
Thanks for the report! Maybe this is a dumb question, but is it possible your 2" slab was really sun crust? On Saturday I traversed a lot of sun-exposed slopes that had a very cohesive 1-2" layer that slid easily on the underlying powder, but this was just the sun crust and not worth worrying about. We didn't find any wind slab at all on saturday, but I think the Chair Pk TR
did mention some...
I also had trouble skinning in places where there were a couple of inches of light new snow on top of that icy base. I found that kicking my skis hard into the icy base helped in skinning up, but (obviously) took more effort...
did mention some...
I also had trouble skinning in places where there were a couple of inches of light new snow on top of that icy base. I found that kicking my skis hard into the icy base helped in skinning up, but (obviously) took more effort...
Not a dumb question at all. I started noticing this once we enterred sun exposed terrain. So here's my question: How do I tell sun crust from wind slab? Is it just an educated guess based on the conditions?
Yeah, I guess I don't have any magic rule of thumb for separating wind slab from sun crust. I just noticed that the layer I'm calling sun crust was 1). never more than an inch or two deep, 2. Only occurred in sun-exposed places, and 3. was very cohesive, as you might expect a layer that had melted and then refrozen to be. Its presence also seemed to be uncorrelated to areas where you might expect wind loading. Of course, if in doubt, assume the worst though...
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