A week ago Matt, Claire, and myself went into the backcountry at Stevens Pass.
Avalanche danger was predicted to be considerable and increase with heavy snow loading expected from a storm arriving midday (a phantom storm that never really showed up), so we planned to stay in safer, treed terrain that wasn't very steep. I put my recent "Level 1" avalanche education to work with a
test pit and found a couple weak layers in recent snow and deeper one on an older crust that took a bit of effort to initiate but the fracture did not propagate (yay!). We played it pretty safe in the upper portion of our runs above the trees, going one at a time and watching each other from safe locations. I also had my Avalung at the ready (thanks, mom and dad). Matt and I had fun with the fact that when you breathe through an Avalung it sounds like one swiss cow that has made many an appearance at the Swenson/Koryczan holiday tables (a recording of this is available on request, but I couldn't figure out how to post it here). The snow was pretty good higher up and on shaded aspects, and now my splitboard has finally seen some powder. Pictures are below.
Matt, Claire, and Matt's new illegitimate child (his new dyna-something who-knows-what skis he keeps telling me about).
Weather station on the way in.
Mountain-man pointing action.
My "skis" next to a filled in test pit.
Matt skiing on his babies.
Claire skiing on her skis.
We got another dump of snow this week, and now it's warming up, which has generally increased avalanche danger recently (but it's complicated - Note that at the end of every NWAC avalanche forecast it says: "Remember there are avalanche safe areas in the mountains during all levels of avalanche danger." You just have to know where (and when) these areas are
). So yesterday I played it safe, stayed in bounds, and rode park with Steve and Natalie. It was a pretty good spring day with temps close to 50 degrees. As I was hiking the quarterpipe at Central, I heard an explosion go off and knew
WSDOT must be doing
avalanche control work along I-90. Then a second or two later I heard something I had never heard before. The closest comparison would be thunder, but it was the sound of an avalanche propagating and sliding from the discharge that was just set off. Everyone hiking stopped for a few seconds and thought or said "Holy [crap] that was a big one." We stopped riding at 2p, found out the pass was closed, and hung out at the tiny convenience store and corn dog stand for an hour and half. At least it was a nice day to be stuck in the mountains.
Hanging out during avalanche control.
Some guy we talked to said the bombs were setting off 10' to 12' crowns, and a natural slide had already gone before the control work started. Here's a
video of some avalanche control work from Stevens Pass if you're curious what some of this looks like (note we were at Snoqualmie Pass yesterday).
We then started a slow crawl down the pass around 4p. There was probably a mile backup of four lanes of traffic plus two exits and then some of people trying to get back to Seattle that whittled down to one lane where the avalanche debris had pushed some concrete barriers onto the interstate. Atleast it was better than the 8-mile backup at the east end of the pass where they closed the pass. We finally got home around 630p.
And finally, the standard Nollie picture you've all been waiting for.
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