April 11, 2008, Snoqualmie Pass

An unexpected trip to North Dakota took me away from our beloved hills for a bit. Ever optimistic, I tossed my skis in the car for the trip, lest I get stuck at some pass in Montana without skis... Turns out, the drive there and back went swimmingly until trying to get over the Pass today - the sunshine was bringing down wet slides. Rather than wait in the avy-control generated parking lot, I headed over toward Kachess/Amabilis to poke around a little. I toured ~700' above the car on NE-NW aspects before my cell phone told me the Pass was open again. Got stuck in traffic anyway. I'm not sure my boss believes me.

Snow's wet and springlike - On ENE and WNW aspects, it was easy to drive small (~6" in the starting zones) but persistent sluffs. On the drive, all aspects showed wet slide activity. Some N-facing slopes I've never seen slides on had smaller wet marks. The WSDOT guys got 4 smaller slides to fill the lanes of the Westbound highway on the SE side of Granite, and got at least a small slide going above the Eastbound lanes as I drove by. The NE path on Humpback had a nice slide from top to nearly valley bottom - too busy driving to get a good look at the trigger.

Glad to get a few unexpected turns in. Perhaps a few pics later.