"Thumper crusts" and wet slabs

curious if others have been looking at the hurricane ridge telemetry and wondering if skiing conditions could be better/safer in the Olympics this weekend instead of teh Cascades....  Looks like the Olympics might've received only a fraction of the snow and rain the Cascades got over the past few days, and since it sounds like there was a fairly significant avy cycle last weekend (from what was posted earlier in this thread) I'm kinda hoping there might be some corn, or at least something other than bottomless sludge, over there

Just remember the Hood Canal Bridge is closed for repairs (see DOT), so you are looking at a long awkward drive unless you go the the SW Olympics.  They got some snow this week too, but I'm mostly going by what I've seen with my own eyes from home.

curious if others have been looking at the hurricane ridge telemetry and wondering if skiing conditions could be better/safer in the Olympics this weekend instead of teh Cascades....  Looks like the Olympics might've received only a fraction of the snow and rain the Cascades got over the past few days, and since it sounds like there was a fairly significant avy cycle last weekend (from what was posted earlier in this thread) I'm kinda hoping there might be some corn, or at least something other than bottomless sludge, over there

We climbed Mt Baldy today, ran into this type of settlement at about 6,000 ft elevation on a ridge running in northwest - southeast. Settlements varied from very small to a couple that were very loud and you could feel the settlement in your legs. The slope was about 15 degrees.
Temperature was very warm, even early in the day and all we found for snow was "bottomless sludge"

Gary

Thumper crust and whooping on the birthday tour at WA pass today. Only occurred on relatively flat ground at the bottom of the valley before starting the ascent to second col.
Thump, thump, whoop ! repeat.
Very unnerving.

Now that we've gotten this out of our system hopefully the snowpack will transition to a bit of a more normal situation. The NWS says that May has been the 7th wettest on record and that a little more rain forecast for tonight and tomorrow could push it to the third wettest on record so the unusual snow conditions of late were pretty predictable.

Clean corn is obviously my favorite but there just weren't enough diurnal melts and refreezes to create much of a crust except during the cold snowy periods. And in the cold periods it was snowing and remaining below freezing, always creating another layer of unconsolidated snow. With these conditions settlement was essentially non existent except for very brief warmer interludes between snowstorms. That meant that timing was everything - you had to be there on the day or so immediately after one of the many snowstorms.

Even though the corn may not be as good, hopefully the settlement and some refreezing will produce more reliable conditions in the near future.

There were some very extensive slabs near the Summerland area that released in the last couple of days. They appeared to be on east aspects although I doubt that means that slabs aren't possible on other aspects. The biggest propagated some 300-400 yards (Class 2.5) on a large 35 degree east facing slope with the crown at mid-slope near 6800'. The slab was about 12" on it's northern edge and released while the underlying crust was still intact. Visible cracks extended farther across the slope with no release. In the center of the slab it stepped down to 2-2-1/2', breaking down the underlying crust. This exceptional propagation width indicates serious structural weaknesses in the Summerland vicinity.

This was the largest of a number of slabs on similar aspects.

It is worth noting that yesterday 200 yards or so from the slab near Panhandle Gap I felt the most violent whumpf I've ever felt which propagated out from my location in flattish terrain at least 40 yards. I believe it was the collapse of a weak crust buried some 12" collapsing the underlying weak wet snow.

A good guess would be that all it would take to get some significant wet slabs would be for the surface crust to weaken and melt water to percolate to weaken deeper weak layers and crusts.

Two of us did the Birthday tour on Friday (22nd) and as we were climbing to Copper pass for a value added run we noticed some wumpfing just before the pass, it was about 13:00 and it had become quite warm. It sounds like this may be prevalent throughout the NW. I have not been able to comfirm it, but I did hear that there was a wet avalanche that closed the North Cross
State at the switch back at Liberty Bell.