HatchYourTrax

Sunshine? Moderate Temps? Good snow (sorta)?  Boy I love spring time!  Whoops, it’s still December and we’re only 9 days into winter.  My bad.

The crew has been out riding a lot lately.  Nothing too epic thanks to the cloudy skies, but the last few days have been beautiful, sunny and decent skiing if you know where to look.  Laird and I toured up to a non-descript location yesterday morning, one of my first dawn patrol sessions in a month or more.  We stuck to some north facing aspects because they were holding much deeper snow and we all got a little tired of skiing some of the wind hammered and crusty south aspects.

The sun came slowly across the valley and upped our lighting from “the darkness” to “visible.”  Laird might have some better pictures.  If so I will add them into the post. The two chutes we skied weren’t big, but coming off that huge wind event we wanted to test the north facing aspects before dropping in on bigger lines.  The snow was great when you broke out onto the aprons, but up high you had to manage a bit of a wind crust.  Our compression test didn’t show too much instability, but we did get a hard failure on the ground.   The weak layer…4 inches of well developed depth hoar.

We hit up 16 mile on the way down as well.  It was relatively fun I guess, but the whooptee do’s, grass exposure and hip to rock landings were not as exciting as one might imagine.  I might even call it skied out.  If you need some turns, don’t have time for a tour and don’t mind possibly bouncing off some rocks then I’d say go for it!

Epic rock pillow line!

Cold temps and clear skies are in the forecast.  High pressure will dominate for the following week or so.  NOAA forecasters are using cool science words like climatology, cyclonic air flow, and apparently, this is a direct quote: “THE NORTHERN STREAM IS SQUIRTING NORTHWEST ACROSS THE BERING SEA INTO SIBERIA.”

On that note, I will leave you with this: Cold air moving in, No new snow in the forecast, and watch out for squirting air streams.

Check the message board for a more detailed snow update from yesterday.

It’s Christmas tomorrow and I hope y’all get the new gear and gadgets you’ve been eyeing. Just remember to limit the cursing to one profanity a minute while you are working out the kinks in the backcountry.  It was great to get the huge dump last week and beyond, I think the storm totals (at least at our house) were over 24″.  Per what I have been calling the Hatcher Occurance, we also got our wonderful 3 days of howling winds.  Upper ridgelines, peaks and bowls are WORKED.  By worked I mean the snow is thin, the sastrugi is thick and the wind crust is packed.

I toured up president’s today and found some good east – northeast facing snow up to about 3500 ft.  After climbing higher the sastrugi and wind crust was less than favorable, but still somewhat fun.  Dug a hand pit and didn’t find much energy, just a hard wind crust on top ranging from 1/4″ to 2″.  Still, there were no shooting cracks or whumping to be heard.  I would have liked to ski a steeper line today, but I was all by my onesy.

Before I headed down the moon rose over the mint valley and was looking pretty rad.  Check out the scouring along the ridgelines in both shots.  The dominant storm flow was SE, but when it funnels through the valleys it seems to hit everything.  On a non hatcher note we hit some urban stuff down in Rage City.  It was all fun and games till someone severely sprained their ankle and knee in one fail swoop.

More of the same weather pattern in the forecast.  There’s a  low moving around the gulf giving us warm weather bringing a little rain down low and some snow up high.  Hey, it could be better, but it could also be a lot worse…the mild temps have been good for the snow (More detail on the message board). Merry christmas and pray for snow!

Yessir, it’s snowing out there!  For those of you who live under some type of rock or in some type of cubicle…it’s puking in the valley.  NWS has issued a winter weather warning for the Matanuska Valley saying an additional 8-15 inches will drop by tomorrow night.  Viz at Hatcher is no good and the storm is supposed to stick around for a few more days so we opted for some storm skiing in the trees somewhere in Turnagain.

Originally, we weren’t supposed to get this much snow at all, but it looks like Ullr and his buddies are smiling on us now.  With all this new snow don’t forget to check out stability.  The snowpack was damn stable before the storm, but it was thin.  There was surface hoar forming in the bottoms of valleys, around rocks and in shaded spots.  Give the snow a bit of time to adjust to the recent load.  One of our sources at the base of the pass said there’s already 12″…which is pretty significant for our shallow snowpack.

While the inches are piling up, the snow water content doesn’t seem very high…which means: BLOWER

In other news, we took part in the AVY 1 course at Hatcher this weekend.  Big thanks to Nancy, Sean, Brad and Tucker of Alaska Avalanche School for putting on a great course and providing priceless insight and experience. Here’s a few shots from this weekend.

Check back for more pictures from the AVY 1 Class

Currently it’s 9 degrees on Marmot Ridge, snowing, 90% RH and there’s been almost no wind.  Let’s warm it up a little bit and keep the wind down.  I know it’s here but PRAY FOR SNOW!