Early Season Conditions and Wind Loading on Tamarack Peak

Since this is the first snow of the season it has not even begun to cover all the rocks, stumps and other obstacles that could easily put us on the couch for the rest of the season. In light of this fact, we chose to leave from the summit parking lot and travel slowly and cautiously across the ridge. When we did have to descend, we employed super wide traverses with kick turns on either end to avoid any semblance of speed, because we knew that there were more rocks than we could see lurking under the surface.

Overall coverage remains as expected and is spotty at best. In more sheltered areas the snowpack measured between 0 and 30 cm (0 to 12 inches) in depth. In wind-loaded areas snowpack depth doubled or tripled to close to 90 cm (almost 3 ft) in some places. These small patches of deeper snow quickly gave way to bare ground below the ridges in many areas. 

Wind slabs had formed in the wind-loaded areas and ski kicks did trigger some shooting cracks on wind-loaded test slopes. Snowpit tests also showed unstable results in the wind loaded areas (2 x ECTP). Even though the wind slabs did remain small, we did not take advantage of the deeper snow afforded by these wind slabs because of the signs of instability. If they had released, it is unlikely that they would have buried us but they certainly would have pushed us into rocks and onto hard ground, so we decided avoiding them was best.

In below treeline sheltered areas, a shallow snowpack with lighter snow below with a more dense layer of snow on the surface existed. We did not find obvious signs of instability in these sheltered areas.

Photo 1: Some skier triggered cracking on a small wind-loaded test slope.

Photo 2: Representative snow coverage in non-wind-loaded terrain. There were numerous exposed and barely covered rocks.

Photo 3: Wind-loaded areas held more snow coverage, but the coverage decreased quickly below the ridges with many areas of bare ground still present.

Photo 4: Numerous bushes, stumps, rocks, and other obstacles still exposed.

Photo 5: Many areas of bare ground still remain due to a combination of wind-scouring and a lack of snow.