Upper Essex Creek

Traveled up to the high country behind Essex today to investigate the sudden snowfall from Sunday night.
 

• Down low in the valley we found approximately 2-3 inches of new snow that seemed to accumulate mostly during a signifcant loading period between 6pm-8pm Sunday night.
• Toured up to Marion Lake and climbed onto the ridge leading to 7798. We observed debris from natural loose dry activity in the new snow (D1). This was mostly observed on SE facing slopes of 40+ degrees. Also observed one similar slide (D1 loose dry) on a NW facing slope of 40+ degrees. Natural.
• Continued up the ridge to find a good pit site. We wanted to target a ENE facing slope because we were interested in climbing and skiing a ENE slope on Adams later in the day, and we also felt that the persistent surface hoar layer (buried from weeks prior) might have been more pronouced on this aspect. The buried surface hoar and fresh wind slabs were our primary concerns going into this day.
• We did not encounter any signs of instability as we toured up the ridge. We stopped at 6575 to dig two snow pits and assess stability and structure.
• Our HS varied from 218 to 245cm.  The new snow from Sunday evening was 19cm at this elevation. And this new snow was divided into two distinct pulses that started as grauple snow. The two thin bands of grauple were evident within the new snow.
• We found the mid pack to be quite stout and supportive on this aspect (very good igloo building snow). 40cm below the surface, the snow becomes a very uniform conglomerate of nearly pencil hard layers.
• We were unsuccessful at identifying a distinct surface hoar layer in either of our pits. Less pronouced here?
• We found a persistent weak layer 126cm below the surface, that demonstrated subplanar failures when highly motivated. However this layer did not propagate or fail in any of our stability tests.
• We continued up the ridge. Only sign of instability was an audible collaspe at ~7240' where the ridge flattened out.
• We observed and noted a D2 slab avalanche on Mount Adams that initiated near a rock outcropping on the steep east facing slopes, south of the summit. We are unsure of the age of this slide. It appeared to have recently occurred, but also appreard that it may have been coated in the 3+ inches of new snow.
• We descended to Almeda Lake from ~7450' onto a SW facing slope.
• At ~6800' and below we noticed that there was an old crust that became suddenly pronounced. We continued to observe good stability during our descent, aside from one D1 loose dry that we triggered on a short intermittent rollover. This sluff ran a short distance on the surface of the pronouced crust (~80')
• We transitioned and climbed Mount Adams via ENE slopes.
• Above ~6800 we finally began to observe more wind effected snow. We had encounted minimal wind effect previously in the day.
• There was moderate wind slab devlopment on due east and pronounced wind board and scouring on NNE. We observed minimal cracking in the freshly wind transported snow, which varied from 3" to 8" deposits.
• We skied ENE and due East off the summit into Upper Essex creek. Good stability during our descent aside for one more D1 loose dry that ran at ~6200' in a 40+ degree gully.
• During our exit we noted a persitent layer of alders that is growing on the surface all aspects below 5000'. It is likely that we will be wrestling with this layer for the remainder of our season...