February 8, 2009, North of Stevens

Randy may post some photos tomorrow on NWHikers.net so I'll put up a link to it if he does.
Today we headed for north aspects from 4500 feet to about 6000 feet elev.

Early this morning I headed for L-worth, grabbed Jake C. and then headed up Rt. 2 to meet Randy, donb, and his son Scott.  Knowing we missed yesterday's warm up (we had east fog until 2:00PM) for some south slope mock-corn, we hoped to find the last of 12 day old holdover powder.  OK, so it's got thin wind slab at times with a few inches of light on top, and at times multiple thin wind slab over what has to be recycled powder/faceted snow over the January crust, but mostly it was honestly really good skiing with up to 8 inches of light stuff.  Now, we had to stay on steep enough dead north aspect to avoid the various melt-freeze, sun, and hard wind crusts that would send skis skidding, but it was out there, folks, really.  Literally, we couldn't stray 30 degrees east or west off of a north aspect. If I didn't already know these spots it might be hard to find something that fit the criteria without a lot of searching.  But if you know some wind sheltered, but not treed, north slopes, go get to them.  It was a gamble, and I was kinda cursing not rallying for Saturday's corn, but it all paid off.  With a great open minded group of partners turned out to be quite an enjoyable day, even with enduring a fair bit of lateral touring.
But I couldn't give you a good assessment of the snowpack structure.  Move 50 feet and it changed.  Sometimes the mid-January crust had seemed to be completely disintegrated.  The 8 to 12 inch storm from Tuesday, 12 days ago, has been blown around into so many different configurations.  Add the temperature gradient moisture movement through the snowpack and there was grip-less sugar at times in our up track.  It was difficult to decide where to dig a profile or exactly why to bother as it changed so fast.  Some woompfing on shallow angle north slope on the up track (thin blown over sun crust?), but it was non existent on our steeper descent routes.  Other than the occasional inch to maybe 2 inch Styrofoam consistency wind slab, nothing was otherwise very cohesive. We took that as a good thing.   It was mostly good skiing through uncohesive recycled powder and/or fine faceted snow.  I guess you can tell I am not sure what exactly to think.  Safe for the moment, but with a significant new load of new warmer snow on top of it, I am not so sure.  And I've kinda exhausted my knowledge of protected north slopes without long days of travel to reach them or a icy return to the car.  But I'd go back here again if the snow doesn't come.  Maybe even a breeze will blow in our tracks and wipe the slate clean over the next couple of days.  Or if we could get even just 6 inches of new€¦€¦
John