New Snow and Rain on Mt. Judah

Looking towards Donner Summit we could see that it was shrouded in clouds this morning. As we drove up to the parking lot, we drove into the mist and encountered light rain. We also saw a few small loose wet snow sluffs on steep terrain while driving up Donner Pass.

When we got out of the car and started up Mt. Judah, we found a firm rain crust on the surface with soft snow below it. This crust lasted up to about 7500' where it became a layer of dense supportable snow (see snowpit for details). We did not observe any signs of instability on this density change in sheltered areas. We also wanted to see how the Jan 4 layer had changed since the last time we were here on Jan 22. Our snowpit tests targetting the Jan 4 layer no longer indicated instability in this layer today. The layer itself was moist and would clump together in your hand. Settlement cracks had started to form around trees in these areas as well. 

Once we moved into the more wind-exposed areas we could see signs of wind-loading on NE and E aspects including cornices above slopes, wind ripples on the snow surface, and drifted snow. We also saw scoured surfaces along the exposed ridges. Fog and mist limited our visibility into the larger wind-loaded terrain. We did find some smaller test slopes with wind slabs on them. We dropped a refrigerator-sized cornice piece onto one of these test slopes and it did not cause any cracking or wind slab failures on the slope. On another more N facing test slope, a ski kick on the convex top of the test slope did produce a shooting crack but the slope did not release. 

The new snow was heavy and moist on all aspects and up to the summit of Mt. Judah.