Dec 5-6, 2007, Sasse Ridge
12/5/07
3075
2
Back to Sasse Ridge this week as usual. Jane came along too. We thought we might end up going up French Cabin Creek because the road was reported closed at that point secondary to the amount of new snow that had fallen. When we got there however, the road was in great shape all the way to Salmon La Sac. By Wednesday the snow from the recent storm had had some time to consolidate, so skinning up was not as tough as I thought it might be. (It was still hard for old legs however.)
That evening the temp dropped down to 22 deg (3800 ft) and the rain soaked snow set up like a brick. This made skinning up Thursday morning quite nice, so we took a few new alternate routes up just to do something different. On essentially all slopes over say 20 degrees we saw glide cracks. They were everywhere, from quite long and deep, to mini versions around little trees. By now everything had set up, but I can't imagine being out when these slopes were active. See the first two pics below. Notice how far back some of the cracks are from the edge of the road.
The slope to the north of the '4600 foot road-bend' had slid as I expected. Right to the ground; so much for keys. The source of the two major slides here turned out to be right at the edge of the road above (after it switches back), right where the glide cracks had formed.
Larry
That evening the temp dropped down to 22 deg (3800 ft) and the rain soaked snow set up like a brick. This made skinning up Thursday morning quite nice, so we took a few new alternate routes up just to do something different. On essentially all slopes over say 20 degrees we saw glide cracks. They were everywhere, from quite long and deep, to mini versions around little trees. By now everything had set up, but I can't imagine being out when these slopes were active. See the first two pics below. Notice how far back some of the cracks are from the edge of the road.
The slope to the north of the '4600 foot road-bend' had slid as I expected. Right to the ground; so much for keys. The source of the two major slides here turned out to be right at the edge of the road above (after it switches back), right where the glide cracks had formed.
Larry
4600 ft road bend -- Is that where the road crosses a minor ridge at latittue 47"23'20, longitude 121"03'33 ?
Randy, yes, that's the place. Maybe I confused everyone by mentioning 'the slope to the north'. I meant the entire north facing slope as the road turns east. The normal route up is to start up the rib at the road bend, but too many small trees still showing now. There are two gullies in the clearcut portion of the north facing slope both of which slid, and probably slid all the way to the bottom. At the lower margin of the clearcut, previous avalanches have cut two swaths following the gullies right down to the creek.
I usually stay off this section of the road unless I'm absolutely sure about the snowpack. And even then I never trust myself. :)
What I didn't mention and should have was that although skiing up was fine, the frozen rain hummocks, rain cups, runnels, snow bombs, etc made the skiing down into a snowplow only and be safe sort of run. And as we got to ~5600 feet, the hard surface was starting to thin so that I suspected that above that would have been a nasty trap crust, but only here and there, just waiting to bite. Interestingly enough, below about 3000 feet the snow surface was much better.
Larry
I usually stay off this section of the road unless I'm absolutely sure about the snowpack. And even then I never trust myself. :)
What I didn't mention and should have was that although skiing up was fine, the frozen rain hummocks, rain cups, runnels, snow bombs, etc made the skiing down into a snowplow only and be safe sort of run. And as we got to ~5600 feet, the hard surface was starting to thin so that I suspected that above that would have been a nasty trap crust, but only here and there, just waiting to bite. Interestingly enough, below about 3000 feet the snow surface was much better.
Larry
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