No Name Bowl12/13/2023 Todays' travel was to No Name Bowl on the PC Ridgeline. The wind was blasting from the E most of last night and all day today. I figured NoName might still be good seeing that it sits at mid- elevation and is somewhat protected from the E winds by the topography. All the other slopes at higher elevations were completely windjacked or wind loaded depending on aspect. On the walk up I encountered every snow type- sun-crust, wind crust, ice, wet snow, and wind slab. When I rolled off the knob into NoName I was pleasantly surprised with the texture of the snow. I knew most of the slope had avalanched during last weeks cycle and stuck to a line that stayed within the boundary’s of the slide. I’m pretty cautious when I'm traveling solo. So I first stepped down into the bowl and probed the snow. I found about a foot and a half of settled powder on dirt. Then I made a few turns and checked again. Same deal, so I skied the line a few times. I stayed away from the part of the bowl that did not slide. By the time I was leaving the wind was doing its thing to the upper portions of the bowl and probably will not be as user friendly tomorrow. I would think the high E winds probably loaded W facing slopes in the upper alpine and might begin to overload some slopes that didn’t go last week.
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Broads Fork12/12/2023 Went up Broads Fork for a look around. Not much snow at the trail head at 6000ft but close to 3 feet at 9000ft. We went up hoping some of the big slopes like the Diving Board and Bonkers had avalanched during the big cycle last week and would allow safe passage. Luckily both slopes had evidence of having under went large avalanches. I doubt we would have ascended if they hadn’t already slid. We went to the Diving Board because we saw a large avalanche right in the middle where it usually slides. Once we got to the base of the slope we realized an older slide had occurred earlier and avalanched out the whole slope. Constantly probing on the way up, it became apparent that the whole slope had been impacted by multiple large slides from off of the Twins and the upper Blue Ice. We put all this information together and decided there was not much hazard above us, which is a real thing in Broads, and that the old faceted snow had been mostly destroyed by the large avalanches. I always put a lot of thought into where I’m going and there is a method to the madness.
We could definitely use some more snow. Still lots of rocks and bushes in the lower canyon drainages, and the exit requires walking out, at least for us it did. In my opinion, the next thing we’re going to have to deal with is faceting of the surface snow if we have an extended dry spell. This includes faceting of the whole snowpack in places where the pack is not deep. Powder fun!12/10/2023
Just throwing up some fun. This is quite a crew- from Pete's 22 year old kid to Rad Brad the Hippy and everything in between. Skiing powder knows no bounds. Make America Eight Again.
Cardiff (12/8) and Butler (12/9)12/10/2023 We had a few warm days leading up to the most recent storm on 12/7-8. The storm came in warm and laid down a layer of graupel and denser snow coupled with fairly strong winds. Then on 12-8 the lake effect kicked in and delivered another couple feet of light density blower, with moderate wind speeds. The two days of warm weather before the storm crusted up the surface of the snow below 8500ft on most aspects, then locked it up when it got cold. It seemed like a good portion of the high elevation steep slopes that had the PWL had avalanched before this most recent storm. Fridays travel was up Cardiff Fork from the BCC side. We ended up in Ivory Flakes knowing that the over head hazard had recently avalanched fairly large and there was not a slab sitting on weaker snow. High PI rates up to 3 inches a hour kept us away from anything steep. Visibility was hard to come by, but the only activity noted was sluffing in the new snow and some pockets of wind loaded snow. The next day we woke up to sunny skies, light winds and cold temperatures. Not knowing exactly how the new snow was bonding, or if the new load was enough to trigger slides down to the PWL we decided to ski steep S facing terrain in Butler Basin. All the N and E aspects had avalanched impressively the previous week. The bed surface on the S facing was basically a frozen, consolidated brick sitting on dirt, and we discovered that the bond with the new snow was good. We skied steep S with zero activity off the back side of Gobbler’s Knob. The surface did end up getting damp and there was some damp snow and crusts on the S on sunday. Between the widespread avalanche cycle last week and a couple days of unusually warm weather it seemed to consolidate the snowpack and start the healing process on the slopes with old faceted snow. We’re not out of the woods yet with the PWL (in my opinion) seeing that a few slides like the one in the Wilson chutes are still being triggered remotely. Avalanches are becoming much harder to trigger and the slopes with the most snow at higher elevations seem to becoming more stable. I’m still wary of steep slopes on the N end of the compass in thinner snowpack areas outside the upper Cottonwood Canyons. Especially rocky slopes where a slide could be triggered in a thin spot in the overlying slab. On the bright side, the last few storms have opened up a bunch of new terrain, and the deeper the snow pack gets the more stable it becomes. Photos are from Ivory Flakes during the storm and Butler Basin after the storm.
Butler fork12/5/2023
Today we went to upper Butler Basin. There was a nasty crust all the way up to 8500ft, due to warm temperatures yesterday and a damp snow surface after the storm. By the time we hit the upper basin the snow was soft, spongy, creamy and supportable. The upper basin went through a massive avalanche cycle. Most of the N facing sub ridge had avalanched, as well as Swedish Corner and a monster coming off the E facing headwall, probably over a thousand feet wide and running 1500 to 2000ft well out on the flats. Biggest slide I have seen so far out of this cycle. We ended up skiing the low angle slopes. The dense creamy snow made for lots of fun. I am still not trusting steep slopes on the N end of the compass with old snow underlying them. The crust down lower is to be feared. It's pretty stout but breakable just when you don’t want it to be.
Cardiff12/4/2023
Took a walk up Cardiff Fork from BCC today. Right off the bat I saw a large avalanche on the Kessler Slab. Continuing up canyon I noted a small wet slab that ran across the summer road before Donut Falls. Then onto Chutes and Ladders, and the Catchers Mitt which had all avalanched at some point during the storm. The largest was the E facing Chutes and Ladders that looked to have cleaned the E face of Kessler wall to wall and ran within 300ft of the summer road. I continued on to the first mine dump right past the turn off to Georges were you cross the creek. I tried to initiate a slide on a due N test hill at 8600 ft and only got a big collapse and shooting crack but no slide. The snowpack was saturated up to 9000ft or maybe even a little higher, but the weak snow underlying the new snow was still dry and weak as ever. On the lower elevation slopes the dense new snow has compressed the light density snow from Friday night and Saturday quite a bit but not enough for me to consider walking up anything steep. I would think the upper elevation slopes are still extremely suspect right now. The warm air temperatures are helping things to settle out quickly but any slope with the PWL are not to be trusted until proven otherwise. The wet slab was a weird outlier for this time of year but not unheard of with a saturated slab and warm temperatures. I would think stability will improve with more settlement and some cold temperatures to lock up the dense and moist slab, but I’ll be holding my cards tight on any steep slope with old faceted snow underlying. The good news is that we finally have a actual base which we’ve been lacking all season. The photos are of Chutes and ladders, the wet slab on the summer road, mid elevation Cardiff Fork, the Video is the avalanches I noted and the saturated snow pack at 8700ft
23-24 Season begins!!12/2/2023
Today we traveled up to the PC Ridgeline via Willow Heights. Skied a line on the sub ridge between the two Monitors and realized it was too deep on the N facing and a little inverted. We knew not to ski anything too steep seeing as there was a slab beginning to form from wind and settlement. We also took into account what the new snow was landing on, the well documented pile of facets and deteriorating crusts, with the most well developed facets sitting on the dirt interface. While walking the ridge of WM we felt a collapse, watched a crack propagate 150ft across the ridge and trigger a large avalanche on the skiers left side of the bowl. Triggering a slide from a flat spot that far away tells you exactly how touchy things were getting. The slide ran on facets at the ground, was 300ft wide and ran 800 vertical well out on the flats. The bed surface of the slide was basically the dirt, rocks and bushes with not much snow left in place. We called the head of snow safety at PC mountain resort just to give him the heads up that no one was involved in the slide and no rescue was required. Things continued to get more touchy as the day went on. We were getting shooting cracks every turn while skiing Wills Hill but it just didn’t have a steep enough angle to slide. Pretty sure if we get the windy, wet and warm storm predicted for tonight shits gonna hit the fan at some point in the high and mid elevations N,NE, NW and W that has old snow underlying it.
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January 2024
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