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Current Conditions: Wednesday started out real nice with lots of sun although it was still a bit breezy across the higher terrain. Late in the day a little disturbance moved through and left a trace to an inch of new snow. Temperatures plummeted into the low single digits. The wind has dramatically slowed down and is from the northwest.
Mountain Weather: We should see mostly clear skies today with high temperatures around 20˚F along the higher terrain. Wind looks pretty light from the north or perhaps even northeast. We'll see the wind shift more northwest and increase on Friday ahead of the next storm system. This storm doesn't look too impressive. We'll see a couple of periods of snow Friday night through Saturday night. I'd say if we get 5 inches of new snow, we'd be doing good.
I was finally able to climb up Rolfson Canyon and get a look around at the northern canyons for the first time this winter. Snow conditions have been shallow and unsupportable to the point where I haven't been willing to try and battle trenching and clobbering rocks and stumps. It's better now but not great.
I got a good look around and found LOTS of HUGE avalanches. I now have a good handle on how the big natural avalanche cycle played out over the last week. The natural avalanches started to release last Weds, Feb 17. This was at the tail end of 3 to 4 feet of new snowfall accompanied by moderate speed wind. Along about Saturday the wind started increasing and by Sunday it was cranking. This drifted all the new snow and caused a secondary avalanche cycle which took place Sunday and Monday. The depths of all these averaged 2 to 4 feet deep with some fracture lines much deeper. They all broke into the weak sugary faceted snow at the base of the snowpack. Here is some of the notable carnage I found on my journey Wednesday.
Photo below: north Rolfson
Photo below: North Creek
Photo below: Staker, east and just down canyon from Race Bowl
Photo below: north fork Seeley Canyon
