Observations from Carson Pass

Toured up a south facing slope near Carson Pass during the afternoon to get a sense of extent of daytime warming. Starting up at 2:00pm, snow was soft with shallow surface melt from Hwy 88 up to about 9200 feet where the snow remained firm. There was a cooler wind present at the ridge area. This snow on the sunny side of the ridge was not soft from warming but it was quite textured and there was little chance of slipping. 

Once at the ridge looking down on Meiss country, the diffference between the south facing snow that I ascended and the firm snow on shady northerly aspects was striking. These are very different snowpacks and snow surfaces. 

Descending I mostly avoided the roughest snow and found decent corn conditions back to the highway. I did not observe any instabilities on this tour. 

Photo 1: A couple inches of melted soft snow during the late afternoon. 

Photo 2: Previous ski tracks indicating snow softening earlier this week. 

Photo 3: Several very large branches had been knocked down by 2/9 wind event.

Photo 4: Gully holding debris from 2/9 wind event. The southwest facing side of this feature held some of the smoothest snow I found. 

Photo 5: Trying to capture depth with my pole for scale of these sun cups/neve penitentes.

Photo 6: Large area of significant neve penitentes. These indicate a signficant amount of time that the slope has been exposed to sun and not seen any new snow. I was surprised by the size of these features and by how large an area they covered.