Dec 9, 2007, Paradise - Runnels and Crowns
12/9/07
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
3777
7
Giving in to the urge to get out and see what the rains, then subsequent cold temps had done to the huge dumps from the previous weekend, the MadDog and I headed for Paradise. Having noted 30" of settlement on the telemetry the past week I had high hopes of a bomber base now for at least another storm cycle or two.
A call to the PS Hotline at 7:30 forecast a Longmire gate opening at 8:00 and we cruised through there @ 8:45 without slowing.
We were about the 3rd or 4th car in the parking lot, temps mid 20's, snowing lightly, little to no wind, solid overcast skys. We planned on doing some pit work on the east facing aspect on Alta Vista and the south facing on Golden Gate Face.
snow conditions in the open were as hoped; about 3-4 inches of freshies atop an impenetrable base. As we climbed we noticed that anywhere the rain failed to completely soak the snow, such as under trees, brush and near rocky outcroppings, the supportable crust was less distinct or nonexistent.
Our east aspect diggings on @ 5900 on Alta Vista undermined my hopes regarding future assumptions regarding the snowpack. There was only 8" of pencil hard raincrust under the 4" of well bonded freshies I'd hoped for more. I had noticed in years past that torrential rains fell amazingly short of saturating the snowpack and this proved to be the case again. I'm not sure why it is that the copious water fails to percolate further down into the snowpack but it sure seems to be a waste to get 30" of consolidation and only 8" of rain crust. Below that was about a foot of 4 finger on top of about 2" of "almost air" then a foot of very soft, fist hardness snow with a couple of inches of rotten depth hoar at the ground level. Not much to give one much confidence if the bridging effect of the raincrust fails.
Another factor that seemed somewhat unique, at least in my experience, was the preponderance of old 6" to 12" crowns from failures on steeper aspects that appeared to have slid during the rains before the freeze. These added substantially to the variability of the snowpack as the crust on the old bed surfaces was obviously much thinner than that above the crowns.
The overcast produced brutal flat light conditions that made it impossible the see runnels or crowns until you dropped over them or ran into them unsuspectingly, which made some otherwise fairly nice skiing conditions a bit of a challenge.
It made me thing of a modified message of the one on my RH outside rear view mirror: "Slopes that appear smooth and silky may be rougher than they appear" :-)
We finally abandoned our plan to dig a pit on GG Face and settled for one last run off Alta Vista down the more mellow ridge towards the hotel, sans crowns but still heavily runneled.
A call to the PS Hotline at 7:30 forecast a Longmire gate opening at 8:00 and we cruised through there @ 8:45 without slowing.
We were about the 3rd or 4th car in the parking lot, temps mid 20's, snowing lightly, little to no wind, solid overcast skys. We planned on doing some pit work on the east facing aspect on Alta Vista and the south facing on Golden Gate Face.
snow conditions in the open were as hoped; about 3-4 inches of freshies atop an impenetrable base. As we climbed we noticed that anywhere the rain failed to completely soak the snow, such as under trees, brush and near rocky outcroppings, the supportable crust was less distinct or nonexistent.
Our east aspect diggings on @ 5900 on Alta Vista undermined my hopes regarding future assumptions regarding the snowpack. There was only 8" of pencil hard raincrust under the 4" of well bonded freshies I'd hoped for more. I had noticed in years past that torrential rains fell amazingly short of saturating the snowpack and this proved to be the case again. I'm not sure why it is that the copious water fails to percolate further down into the snowpack but it sure seems to be a waste to get 30" of consolidation and only 8" of rain crust. Below that was about a foot of 4 finger on top of about 2" of "almost air" then a foot of very soft, fist hardness snow with a couple of inches of rotten depth hoar at the ground level. Not much to give one much confidence if the bridging effect of the raincrust fails.
Another factor that seemed somewhat unique, at least in my experience, was the preponderance of old 6" to 12" crowns from failures on steeper aspects that appeared to have slid during the rains before the freeze. These added substantially to the variability of the snowpack as the crust on the old bed surfaces was obviously much thinner than that above the crowns.
The overcast produced brutal flat light conditions that made it impossible the see runnels or crowns until you dropped over them or ran into them unsuspectingly, which made some otherwise fairly nice skiing conditions a bit of a challenge.
It made me thing of a modified message of the one on my RH outside rear view mirror: "Slopes that appear smooth and silky may be rougher than they appear" :-)
We finally abandoned our plan to dig a pit on GG Face and settled for one last run off Alta Vista down the more mellow ridge towards the hotel, sans crowns but still heavily runneled.
Thanks for the data , Ron. Was it snowing at all Sunday?
Oh, Yeah, I forget to mention that, Mack.
It snowed all day and it was dumping when we left, mid afternoon.
It snowed all day and it was dumping when we left, mid afternoon.
We were also up in the Paradise vicinity yesterday.....flat light and flurries in the morning kept us from going high...so once we reached the base on pan point we decided to drop down into Edith creek. This run was a couple inches of dust on crust....and very vertigo inducing as we couldn't decipher terrain features or if we were moving or not for that matter. We traversed across hoping to find better conditions on Bundy's. No such luck.....more dust on crust. As we completed this run the sun began to try to peek out....about 1:30. We headed up Mazama ridge and the sun came out in full force. Now, that we could actually see we were hoping things would improve. We dropped one of the steeper lines on the skiers left hand side of the bowl....more dust on crust. We skinned back up and dropped the shallower line on skiers left where we placed our skin track...this was the best run of the day. Enough powder to hide the runnels, enough light to see, and just enough incline for a speedy descent. It was nice and smooth. Fun, fun. Too bad we found this line so late in the day....cause it could have used an additional lap or 2. Oh, well....we head on out and dropped down to the road.....Mazama ridge was also of the dust on crust variety and could definitely use some more snow to fill in the terrain.
All in all...not a bad first day of the season.
All in all...not a bad first day of the season.
Good info Ron!
We (Justin, Michael L. and myself) ventured up to Muir on the 8th and found highly variable wind-affected snow up high (wind- scoured to bare water-ice in some spots, but mostly covered with several inches of soft snow for fun turns, though occassionally bottoming-out on surprise ice chunks below). The runnels weren't too noticeble above Pebble Creek, though it seemed rather boney for this time of year around Pebble Creek.
Pics from Saturday are posted here. (Also, noted widespread surface hoar on Saturday below Pan Point).
We (Justin, Michael L. and myself) ventured up to Muir on the 8th and found highly variable wind-affected snow up high (wind- scoured to bare water-ice in some spots, but mostly covered with several inches of soft snow for fun turns, though occassionally bottoming-out on surprise ice chunks below). The runnels weren't too noticeble above Pebble Creek, though it seemed rather boney for this time of year around Pebble Creek.
Pics from Saturday are posted here. (Also, noted widespread surface hoar on Saturday below Pan Point).
Thanks for the pit data. Not what this tyro would've expected.
Ron - Thanks for the snowpack data!
Hello Ron & Maddog-
Great report! Looks like a bad setup for the future with ugly stepdown possibilities. Looks like about 40" then @ 5900'?
Gerry
Great report! Looks like a bad setup for the future with ugly stepdown possibilities. Looks like about 40" then @ 5900'?
Gerry
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