TR Replies

Great photos as always, Kam! I added them to the video, hope you don't mind. ;)

The students.washington.edu server is unfortunately down, first time it's happened in the past two years. I hope it'll be back online quickly.

1/17/05 5:39pm

scotteryx

Why is someone carrying wands? ???

RAD! ;D

1/17/05 8:20am

kam

some photos:

group pbelitz jimjar prgsmall

1/17/05 5:22am

skip

Actually, we were going to use them to mark features to look out for given the flat light. Problem being that Kam was the one carrying them...

1/17/05 5:14am

garyabrill

I've seen the same thing you've described, Garth, looking in winter towards the Oly's. At the top of an inversion the Olympics appeared upside down as mesas riding on the top of narrow pillars. Oh wait....maybe I was high at the time. ;)

1/17/05 5:07am

kam

Jan 16, 2005, Alpine trail to top of Palmer, Mt Hood

Why is someone carrying wands? ???

...ahhhh... yeah, wands. right. oh, i had planned to use them as markers for a beacon search, but it never happened. yeah, that's right, for a beacon search. :)

but Sky's reason sounds more believeable...

1/17/05 4:16am

snowdogs

well, we were in the same low snowpack yet high avalanche danger dilemma. While driving up from Hood River (where it was 25 degrees and grey) we broke out of the clouds and on a spur of the moment decided to go to Cooper Spur. And it was much better than expected. Mostly it was the unexpected sunshine :) and 35 degrees but the skiing wasn't all bad. A little crusty up top and a little soft at the bottom but we were on skis all the way up.
time to do the snow dance...

1/17/05 3:55am

skykilo

To magically turn the rain into powder, Phil!

1/17/05 3:52am

Nice work Paul! 8)

1/17/05 3:46am

philfort

Why is someone carrying wands? ???

1/17/05 3:14am

Paul Belitz

I think it's actually a function of the kamera ( ;) ) and the photographer, but the jacket doesn't hurt!

1/17/05 2:59am

Jeff Huber

Nice video (and nice music choice too, brought back memories of the mid 90s). I really liked the still of you jumping in the bright orange jacket--that jacket is really photogenic in the low light.

1/17/05 1:47am

wolfs

I was up there on Jan 15th (on snowboard and traveling with snowshoes of all things ... ) The wallowing upwards with snowshoes was unpleasant in the areas where the crust wasn't holding up, and I envied the AT and tele skiers who passed us (frequently) on the way up. But the snow probably proved to be better snowboard snow on that day after all so at least some of the suffering was justified. On a snowboard you could just flatten the crust and the 4" made a good turn surface.
I dug a pi...

1/17/05 1:43am

ron j

Nice video, Paul.

1/17/05 1:01am

gregL

Nice. And to think I spent the day taking a truckload of stuff to the dump.

1/16/05 10:15pm

Garth_Ferber

Amar is right that the 4300' temp at Alpental is erratic and we should have put a reminder at the top of the NWAC data file some time ago. We will do it today. The weather station is at the bottom of chair 2.

1/16/05 9:48pm

ski_photomatt

January 14, 2005, Waptus River, Salmon la Sac

I think the progression at Stevens is real though. The was really warm air aloft (look at Baker and Paradise telemetry) and cold air at the surface and trapped in Eastern Washington. At the passes, cold air from the east kept the surface below freezing, but allowed the air aloft to warm, and hence freezing rain.
&n...

1/16/05 7:58pm

gusk

After reading your TR and knowing the avy conditions and pouring through my limited guidebook library, I planned on heading to tour the Howson Creek trail in the Salmon La Sac area on Sunday.

Our party of three included myself, my wife and a friend who had never tried backcountry skiing. Heading over the pass, we were dealing with 15 deg temps and rain. Really strange, icy roads, slow traffic, and wiper problems lead to a change of plans and we stopped at Hyak to maybe do a to...

1/16/05 12:10pm

Amar Andalkar

The Alpental page (OSOALP) is pretty interesting too. Overnight and into today, the 5400' station climbed slowly from 13 to 33 degrees. The 3120' station climbed slowly from 12 degrees to 22 degrees. The mid-level, 4300' station, however, went through this progression over the same time period: 5 to 19 to 12 to 40 to 23 to 45 to 20 to 44 to 28 to 40.

The mirage photos are very cool, as are the various sudden temperature swings. But the...

1/16/05 8:56am

Charles

Jan 16, 2005, Alpine trail to top of Palmer, Mt Hood

This is really interesting - thanks for the report and photos, Phil. I had never heard of this before, but can see how it is analogous to the mirages over a hot road or sand. The temperature differences which led to this phenomenon can be seen in the NWAC telemetry data, along with some amazing temperature swings. Good examples on the Stevens Pass pages.

From the Stevens Hwy2 page (OSOSTS), hourly temperatures on 1/16 from 3 am to 7 am:
4000' temp: 10, 11, 10, 11, 10
4900' temp: &nb...

1/16/05 6:42am

AndyP

Are you kidding me? Sunny turns today - I would have never guessed. Pretty good vert too.

1/16/05 2:30am

Garth_Ferber

I once saw a similar phenomena once several years ago looking at the Olympics from somewhere in the Cascades. I can't find any notes on it. As I recall it was winter and several of the Olympics peaks had images of themselves floating directly above. I even remember that each image seemed sort of upside down. Is this possible? Guess I'll go read the link given by Michael.

1/15/05 11:30am

Michael

Very cool Phil! I love this kind of stuff. The explanation is actually quite simple for this and is a reverted mirage from the typical ones you see on the road where the cold air is on top of the warm air.

Here is a website that gives a good explanation on this:

1/15/05 7:06am

philfort

Interesting... actually, I first noticed it looking to the northeast, and it *really* did look like mesas... I was like "hmm... I didn't know we had that kind of terrain in washington". Then only when we got a better view of the Maude/Entiat area did we realize what it was.

Some more mesas:

Another strange thing we experienced was a pronounced echo on the ridg...

1/15/05 6:55am

Lowell_Skoog

Now for the weird stuff. Clockwise from the Chiwawa river valley to the Stuart Range, above a lower cloud deck, there was some kind of "lens" that was "smearing" the view of the mountains, stretching them out vertically, like a TV scan line repeating itself.

On 3 Feb 1996 I skied Jim Hill Mountain with some friends and saw a similar phenomenon. Here's how I described it in my journal:

&q...

1/15/05 6:54am

Paul Belitz

January 13, 2005, Heather/Skyline Ridge

That's a bizzarre light effect. Cool!

1/14/05 2:07am

cascadesfreak

Good report Orion! The snowpack has definitely gotten scary.
--Chris

1/13/05 9:51pm

Scotsman

January 13, 2005, Heather/Skyline Ridge

Thank you for your report, I was just on the phone making plans to ski in this very area on Sunday when I read it.
Based upon your report, I'm ditching the idea at present for somewhere else. or maybe in-bounds.

It's getting scary out there with snow conditions we are not used to .
I hope everybody stays vigilant this weekend and doesn't let the fustration factor tempt them to take a chance.

1/12/05 3:51am

Michael

That's really sad news. Here is another article:

1/12/05 2:29am

Randito

Bad news...
Link

Skier dies in avalanche at Snoqualmie Pass

04:26 PM PST on Wednesday, January 12, 2005

KING5.com Staff

SEATTLE - A male skier died after being buried in an avalanche at Alpental at Snoqualmie Pass on Wednesday afternoon.

Two skiers were skiing when the avalanche occurred at about 12:30 p.m. One man was buried, the other went for help....

1/12/05 2:02am

mjt

We made a good choice. I was a bit sketched up there by the time we turned around. Damn.

1/12/05 1:46am

kam

Greg: i'm glad you stopped and turned around.

i'm glad we stopped and turned around too...

1/12/05 1:40am

cascadesfreak

Greg, glad you didn't try to ski International...I'd agree with Jim that we picked a good turn-around point this morning.

1/12/05 1:38am

Paul Belitz

Argh, I'd be interested, but Tuesday is the one day that I don't have time. >:(

1/12/05 1:30am

jimjar

Greg, I just heard word of the Avalanche and I am glad it wasn't you. Good thing we turned back where we did.

1/12/05 1:30am

mej

I'm done w/class at 10:30 on Tuesdays pBelitz, if you are interested.

1/12/05 1:28am

gregL

Here's a few more pictures, not as good as Kam's - sorry to lose your head, Jim!

. . . it was really this dark
cascadesfreak
Most of jimjar taking air
A lineup of TAY'ers

1/12/05 1:16am

Paul Belitz

Those are nice shots IMHO, Kam, especially the one of Greg. I can't do dawn patrols, but I can do dusk patrols (out of class at 11:30 most days). Now if this stupid hoar layer would just disappear....

I'm very glad that you guys are OK, Greg. I'm scared for the skiing community, everybody has powder fever despite the avy danger. I won't be at all surprised if someone gets killed.

1/12/05 1:16am

Jeff Huber

khayak's wife (who works for the Summit) reports rumors of a skier buried on International this afternoon, patrol was reportedly attempting CPR . . .

From
http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_011205WABavalancheaxSW.727275.html:

SEATTLE - A male skier was caught in an avalanche at Alpental at Snoqualmie Pass on Wednesday afternoon.

Two skiers were skiing in a closed area when the avalanche occurred at about 12:30 p.m. One...

1/12/05 12:54am

kam

nothing like an early morning stroll to get the heartrate up, and then some breakfast afterwards [skier -- GregL">:

good news: the coverage is improving.

this morning's new graupel-like layer was interesting, but fun to ski. as Cass mentioned, the layer was more dense than what was below it. small (ft.^2-sized) chunks broke off with very little effort, sliding on the interface...

1/12/05 12:34am

gregL

After the dawn patrol run, I met up with khayak at his house and we decided to go back to Alpental for another lap - I told him there was already a good uptrack!

The heavy graupel had continued to fall, making me miss the skin track several times (and this where I had set it), so several inches had accumulated in, say, 3 hours.

The snow had also changed drastically in texture, the upper 6-8" was much denser - we got to within about 300 vf of the top (last steep face) and sudde...

1/11/05 10:58pm

mej

January 10, 2005, Mt Baker

Thanks also too all for putting up with the lone snowshoer of the group. The two classes missed were certainly worth it. Those sitting around me in my 10:30 Applied Math course were probably not too happy that I had to forego a shower in order to be on time.

1/11/05 10:52pm

galen

No, I guess it's called Baker BC. Table Mtn and Mt Herman are connected to the valley that the upper parking lot of the Mt. Baker Ski Area is located.

1/11/05 10:47pm

mjt

What a morning! Beautiful terrain, fresh snow! Only wish I didn't spend so much time with my face buried in it :)

Thanks for putting up with a novice like me!

Like I figured, I got back to work just in time for a crisis.

1/11/05 10:33pm

jimjar