April 8-10: Another Spring 2010 Storm

Trip Report and Images from Dave & Posse:

We started our skin in on Thursday and almost immediately we were hit by a
windstorm. Probably 25-30 MPH headwinds with gusts that we had to brace
ourselves not to fall over from. About the time we hit the trail head it
started to snow. Not too long after that it started to snow at about 1″/hr.
No one had been up there since the last major snow so we broke trail all
the way up. There was about 8-12″ of pretty nice powdery snow on the
headwall. Needless to say we were glad to make it to the comfort of the Yurt.

We woke up on Friday with low expectations for the snow after the major
wind event the day before and our expectations were proven correct when we
hit the cirque. We went to a low angle E facing slope on the S side of the
cirque and dug a pit. There was about an inch of wind slab on top of
12-18″ of heavy dense slab on top of an ice crust from the 3 weeks of sun we had.

On Saturday we again woke up to a nice bluebird day. We got up and headed
to the N side of the cirque to try the conditions there. Things were
warming up nicely and softening the wind crust. We headed up on top of
one of the lower knobs and dug a pit. It was on a 28 degree S facing
slope and it failed while cutting the column. Needless to say none of us
felt like adventuring on to anything steep so we stayed on slopes less
than 30 degrees. We took several more runs on low angle terrain from some
of the more treed and sheltered knobs lower down in the cirque. Overall it was a really nice day to just be out enjoying the sun and snow.