HatchYourTrax

Hope everyone is enjoying the new look.  We’ve added an image gallery, some new links in the AK Riding section and the message board will be back online shortly.

Well I failed to bring my camera on the Thursday storm day. Then Friday, as the weather cleared to blue skies, my cam batteries died on Marmot. Hopefully you got out and enjoyed the new snow this weekend.  It was light, dry and relatively deep. Marmot was holding. Alpenglow was sick!

We hit the low viz locale today and I finally got some shots. More pics in the gallery.

J samples the blower!

The light is back to the usual and the wind was blowing this morning up high.  Still, the windbuff skied great!

Windblown Hatcher goodness

As the storm was clearing on Friday I toured up Marmot ridge. I dug a west facing isolated column test on a 35 degree slope and absolutely could not get the column to fail.  The column was just about 5 ft deep, and set in between rock bands just off where the skin track gains the ridge.  The new snow sloughed off the crust right away, but below that I got no failures and good stability clues.

This was just one test, and the wind has kicked up since then. There was definitely a little more energy out there today with some pretty large snow variability in places (East facing aspects). Could be a few ft deep, could be inches on tundra.

There’s snow and warmer weather in the forecast again.  Let’s just hope the wind stays relatively calm and we don’t have a repeat of the last two weeks. I do like the looks of this though:

Ullr!!! What have we done to deserve this torture?

Mitch, Jared and I gave it a go on Saturday and decided promptly, for the first time in months, one lap was more than enough.  Still, skiing is skiing and we dove in!

The north facing chutes we skied were rock hard, unbreakable wind slab.  The only soft snow was for about 30 ft. near the bottom.

Wind scoured on all aspects. South facing slopes had a hard but breakable crust over two ft. of facets

Yes, it was a crapshoot of a day.  It’s going to take some snow to get Hatcher back in shape.  It was near 45 up at the Independence lot on Friday.  At the time of this writing the Marmot Station was reporting a temp of 27.3 F.  It seems like a springtime snowpack, with weekend temps above freezing for near 24 hours. 

 

 

Only problem is…our springtime snowpack has no snow.

No significant weather to talk about at this time.  It’s going to be warm for a few more days, with possibly some showers mixed with snow.  Turnagin got the opposite effect of over 7 ft of snow with rain mixed in.  The reports were an oddly unenthusiastic description of warm oatmeal riding.  At least the sun was out.

I love living in AK.  We were welcomed back from the lower 48 with 10+ inches of fresh and bluebird skies.  Thank you Ullr.  I warn you, this is a picture heavy update…bluebird skies and warm temps equal technology invasion.  My gopro has been acting weird, so I don’t really have any helmet cam footy, just a few shots. These pictures are from Friday and Sunday.  I chose just to ride and enjoy the pass on saturday…It was epic.

Mashing some freshie potatoes                                 Lovin the graybird shred locale

Post Storm Skies and deep Pow                    They call him a Shredi

On Sunday the forecast was mostly cloudy with isolated snow showers. I was a bit doubtful in the lot but the showers never showed up…the sun did though. With temps in the 20′s and clear skies we skied untracked pow all day long!

Sunrise Skintrack                                                     Going for gold

Cody dog killin it                                        Back at it…sick photos by Erin!

Farming turns with the canine                              Bash greenlighting it

The next two shot are from my GoPro cam.  For some reason it kept reverting back to photo.  Hence the following POV shots:

Mitch, Ed and Cody look over                                                Yeahhhhh!!!

Now to the technical stuff. I dont usual go into this much detail but I feel that after this weekend’s events, why not spread the word on my observations.  On Saturday it was super warm up high.  The sun was definitely creating an upper crust and the snow felt pretty wet by noon.  A compression test on a south aspect, 32 degree slope showed medium failure on the new snow/old snow interface (CT13, Q3).  Below this was a consolidated slab about 6-8 inches thick on top of about two ft. of sugar and facets.  The next failure was a hard failure (CT23 Q2) but the column failed clean all the way to the ground.  With local factors and visuals from that day we decided to give it a go. We dropped two cornice blocks onto loaded north slopes today and got nothing.  We found great snow, but it could be variable up high in spots.

NOAA is forecasting a continuation of the current weather pattern, with continued lows moving into the area for the long term forecast.  Next few days are supposed to be cloudy and warm.  Turny continues to get rain and snow.  Check CNFAIC for forecasts and AVY details.