January 29, 2008, Snoqualmie Snow Science

T'was a day to be remembered.

As usual, skip past the drivel for concise conditions reporting.

Will T. and I rolled out of town early on a hunt for deep powder on friendly low-angle slopes. We were just caught by the 4:15 am avy closure. We began the 1610 AM vigil - not knowing we'd soon be spending hours listening to "The highway department radio is being updated..." We took the opportunity to chain up, given that we had nothing else to do. 5:15 rolled around, and we powered onward.
      Taking the exit of choice, we found 6-8" of light powder covering our desired track. My Escort has ~4" of clearance. Like powder flowing past boots, the snow flew past, around, and over the car. Hitting the light and fluffy 2' high drifts at 25 mph in the dark was incredibly fun. Unbeknownst to us, we lost a chain somewhere in the parking process.
      Just after gearing up, we were plowed in. Putting off the inevitable, it was time to skin. T'was deep - easily three times slower than my usual pace, if not slower. As the morning light appeared, we began our climb toward what we hoped would be heavenly powder. As we reached the first of my usual test slopes, we noted that small natural crowns abounded. Every W-facing 40+ degree mini-slope with a view to the sky had slid, sometimes more than once, on what seems to be a ~1/4" surface hoar layer formed just below the present dumpage. Will and I tried myriad approaches to triggering more mini-slides with somewhat less success than we had hoped.
      A little after 7 am, the ski areas and the soon-to-be-haggard I-90 crew began blasting in earnest. As we continued to climb, we heard at least three extremely productive shots from the snowshed end of the world. Not long after (~9am), we tired of our uphill slog through fabulous snow (there's a very soft crust 1' above the beginnings of the newest snow) and attempted our descent. Our dreams of gliding through heavenly deep snow were not to be.
    Stepping off our consolidated uptrack placed us into a ski-pole's worth of powder (the new, atop the weekend's new, atop the still not consolidated stuff from the week before). Heading downhill was never so much work. See the picture at the bottom to see Will parked, skis in the fall line, next to my trench. Good, good snow, but not nearly stable enough to ski the steepness it craved.
    We skied our skintrack out - it was the only sensible thing to do. The continued snowfall resulted in fine, if not too deep, powder on the skintrack itself. We found that we were pushing bow waves of snow before and atop our skis in the snow that had fallen since our passage less than two hours before.
    Long story curtailed slightly - we made it to our car and began shoveling. A friendly plow driver pulled us free and told us that the pass was closed. We noted the absence of our chain. Some more high-speed mono-chaining later, we met up with a police officer who confirmed the pass closure. I called in stuck to work.
      Then we did the inevitable. We skied Alpental. At most 50 folks on the mountain, and plenty of wind-reloading, made the still-falling snow extremely pleasant. Will and I had never skied there before, but we enjoyed ourselves mightily.
      Lots of AM radio vigil, chain shenanigans, and benevolent I-90 controller folks later, we arrived happily home at 10 pm. It's a shame we weren't stuck up there for another Alpental morning.

Conditions: Instability abounds. Lots of snow coupled with a number of weak layers (some just below the new) makes for some serious badness. Be careful. All that said, there's some good snow up there. Talking with WSDOT folks suggested that some pretty big slides had hit the road.