Snow condition on white wing

We toured up to 9800’ on White wing today to survey the coverage and get a look at the damage from the recent NE winds. The approach form the highway was pretty thin in spots but we were able to slide on snow both in and out today. Another day with warm temps and clear skies and there will be a few dry spots on the road to the summer trailhead. From glass creek up to tree line coverage ranged from 40-60 cm and was largely unconsolidated snow (4f at most) resting on top of the weak November facets. Coverage is notably thin and plenty of preseason obstacles exist at all elevations.

 We chose to climb an east facing gully to the ridge as it was the only swath of snow that looked to connect from top to bottom. In more exposed areas near tree line the surface snow was much less pleasant. A solid 1f-p hard wind skin ranging from 1-3 inches think made for a bit of trap door skiing above 9000’.

We dug a pit in a deposition zone at around 9500’ on a NE aspect. HS was 95 cm and the pack here was much more consolidated then I have found in many other places. See profile for more details. We identified a layer of weaker facets around 30cm off the ground, but this layer was not reactive in our stability tests.  We did note some small cornice like features on the ridge line that broke easily under a skier’s weight and some very localized cracking on small wind deposits. No other signs of instability were observed on our travels today, though it should be noted that we largely avoided avalanche terrain.