Backcountry Skiing..Your Winter Window Into The Chugach.
A shadow points to today’s problem. Scary stable? Some gusty winds last night lightly slabbed most front range surfaces resulting in fair skiing. Skied up to Goodwills quite aways and then worked my way back down carefully over grabby snow and such. Good thing? Clear/Calm/17F. Could almost see Canada. Saw one other soloist. North of the Pass was cold to […]
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Skies opened up today enough to probe around and get some good skiing. First skin was to the summit of Little Odessey, finding it well-rimed and icy near the top. Dropped the opposite side and found good, but variable snow down to Harveys Ditch. With blue skies moving in, we headed to Schoolbus and poked around at mid-mountain finding fair […]
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While waiting for the avalanche gates to open at 12-Mile yesterday, I was asked about avalanche ratings and it seems like a good topic as we wait for the clouds to clear. In a previous forecast I had mentioned the likelihood of “D2’s during the current storm cycle. Rating the sizes of recent avalanches takes a keen eye and knowledge […]
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Ventured up Obsession from Worthington Glacier State Park, crossing the road and meandering carefully to mid-mountain. The differences in snow depth from the road to 3500 was “obese”, if that word is allowed to describe the snowpack I encountered. I’ve never probed 240cm at this site. Nearly a third of the depth is new storm snow….and there is more on […]
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Avalanche hazard rating will remain CONSIDERABLE in Thompson Pass through Sunday with the primary hazard being small and large active slides occurring frequently in common zones along the highway corridor as a good indicator. Snow (est 5″ WE in past 48) and wind loading above 5000′, in particularly N/E/W aspects, could produce some climax slides (D3) There is a high […]
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Effective 12/29-1500 through 12-31-0600. Models and NWS discussion forecasts are aligned for a CONSIDERABLE AVALANCHE HAZARD to develop Tuesday night with the second of two lows bringing an abundance of precipitation as snow at higher elevations and rain at lower elevations. Of particular concern Wednesday morning is a rapid rise in SE winds to near 70 along higher elevations along with […]
Read moreSki and avalanche reports will be taking a break during the holidays to attend Ashley Kinney’s,(Valdez HS Class of 2003) graduation from the University of Hawaii-Manoa. Boogie board time versus ski time is not a bad alternative to the epic snowpack building in the high Chugach. Enjoy the snow and the deep winter powder. Cheers to all!
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