Early Season Snow Pack

Rater than hijack another thread I thought it would be good to discuss this seasons early snowpack and how it might effect your early season skiing plans. Many of us enjoyed the great skiing on Heliotrope Ridge over the last 3 weeks. The posts on this site created an amazing scene and resulted in much of the main snow field being skied out.

I noticed while partaking of the fun that there was some thing going on with the snowpack. On the steeps and even some lesser slopes your skis penetrated easily all the way through the 6 to 10" of new snow to the hard base below.  I should clarify this was last Sunday Nov. 6Th. Blower pow ? perhaps but perhaps not ! I did not dig or examine the crystals closely but my experience suggests surface faceting.  two weeks of relatively clear and cold nights produced a situation where the top 6 to 8" of the snowpack has begun to morph into faceted crystals. 

I'm bringing this to your attention because this situation can become a significant weak layer in our early season snowpack and is worth watching. How this will effect stability in the future will be determined by
the next storm cycle, were in it now.  A wet cycle could help stabilize this situation a cold cycle could leave this layer in tacked and create a very reactive snow pack later.

I though this would be a good topic for discussion since it has the potential to effect most all of us. Does this surface condition exist were you skied ? is it localized in the Baker area ? or just the Heliotrope Ridge area ? These are all points of good discussion.

Chuck

Great topic Chuck, thanks for posting it. I haven't been out to ski yet, but there have been several reports already of weaknesses and even a larger, destructive slide in the Baker area.

My feeling with our current depth and the uncharacteristically clear, cold weather is that our snowpack at the moment is almost like a mid-season continental snowpack. Not super deep, with high T gradients and lots of potential weak layers. Hopefully we get a big whopping warm, wet storm to crush things down.

Amen Brother

The that you mention, Chuck, I likewise, saw some effects of begginning surface hoar in open areas around Paradise last last Sunday.

I hate to be negative, but these surface hoar, depth hoar, whatever hoar reports that come out throughout the season really typically do not amount to anything. This is not Colorado. Most of these snow crystal thingys will quickly be pounded into submission by our warm heavy snowpack. Unfortunately for those online snow scientists, our coastal snowpack is extremely boring. Thankfully.

Yeah well, between Skimac, Ron J and Marcus, they've probably logged enough on-snow experience to comment intelligently on any snowpack, and their time on snow this year already makes for a relevent and cautionary commentary. Sure, the snowpack at 3000 might wet out and obliterate some squares, but up higher it's quite likely those little facets might get a considerable colder, probably wind effected, layer or layers laid over them. Every winter's different, and an easy way to die is to assume our coastal snowpack is ever stable.