Hidden Peak Observations

Toured Hidden Peak today and found surprisingly good skiing up high and unsurprising dust on crust conditions down low. Skinning up around 8am we were mostly able to avoid slippery firm conditions but a few steeper and more SE facing turns were challenging. About 3 inches of blower powder was present at Hwy 89 and snow depth steadily increased to maybe 8 inches just below the summit ridge. Ascending to the summit we saw no evidence of wind effected snow until the final 50 feet when soft subtle features were visible. Along the upper ridge there were areas that were stripped down to the crust and nearby pillows with almost two feet deep of new snow. These deeper drifts displayed only minimal evidence of cohesion. The upper almost 1000 feet of skiing was excellent due to the deeper snow and lower angle terrain requiring less aggressive turning and thus less scraping. Once the slope became steeper and the snow depth started to decrease scrapey turns became increasingly common. We did see some interesting dry loose activity at a short steeper convex roll around 8000 feet on an E aspect. Part of our crew returned for a second lap and reported larger sluffs on more SE aspects. 

Photo 1: Most of the day had more clouds than this but occasional pockets of blue did emerge.

Photo 2: Surprisingly little evidence of wind slab were observed. This was the most cohesive new snow I could find on the summit area.

Photo 3: Looking north towards Rubicon Peak. 

Photo 4: Trees on the summit ridge had soft snow sticking to their branches.

Photo 5: On a steeper rollover at about 8000 feet there was some sluffing. I heard reports of larger stuffs running longer on more east facing terrain with a firmer crust.