april 1, Tatoosh

Had a great day in the Tatoosh range yesterday. Skinned to the col between Pinnacle and Plummer, and skied both the north and south slopes from there. Saw pretty much the same conditions the guys over near Crystal found: ~6" of new on top of crust. Snow had definitely blown over onto the north slopes near the ridge, making for deeper, though not all that consolidated, pillows below the ridge and some hefty cornices. We found the fresh snow released quite easily from the crust on north aspects, causing some big sluffs. At one point my partner broke off an 8-10" crown that ran for about 40'. The break was clean with a very clean running surface beneath, but the "slab" immediately broke up into a long sluff that ran about 400 vertical feet. She easily avoided it by skiing to the left. Pits we dug on north (6000') and west (5700') aspects showed ~6" of fresh (with some localized pillows of deeper where wind had deposited) on top of a crust that was actually a sandwich of three 1" crusts with ~1" of light snow separating them. Like I already mentioned, the fresh slid quite easily on this layer. There was also a more worrisome crust layer about 1 1/2 feet down (deeper than that in areas where the wind had deposited more of the new snow). That layer was much more difficult to release - I couldn't get it to go with 30 hits on a shovel compression test - but when I slid my shovel behind a column and pried, it slid off revealing another very clean running surface. The snowpack up to the top (sandwich) crust layer was frozen and we decided it was pretty unlikely that the surface sluffing would step down to this lower layer. Had there been more snow or wind, or higher temps, I think we would not have wanted to ski the north aspects.

Pits on south aspects (5900') revealed an even poorer bond between the new snow and the crust. The snow below the crust was fairly consistent. The bonding got better as we descended. The new snow was much less fluffy than on the north, and at about 5300' the conditions began to turn to cream cheese. We dug around a little and found that the underlying crust was somewhat wet. It had been well frozen up near the col.

All in all a great day with some beautiful snow to the north and some pretty mediocre snow to the south. Stability below the new snow seemed good with some heavy, though manageable, sluffing of the new. We were having so much fun that we stayed out until about 7pm and almost got locked in. Sorry I don't have any pics to post; I don't own a digital camera yet.