Becker Ridge Tour

Looking to get our touring gear unpacked and dialed in, and for some refresher practice in snowpack observation, we went for a mild ski tour. We chose Becker ridge to revisit the location of the SAC snow profile from 11/14 to see how the snowpack has evolved since that observation. 

We were on the late side getting started, around 10am. Weather was quite warm with clear skiess. Skinned up from Echo SnowPark via the south aspect of Becker Ridge. Snow surface had already formed a nice corn layer by the time we were headed up. Snowpack was supportive but on the thin side and there were quite a few branches and the like still poking out of the snow.

We toured to within a few meters of the 11/14 Becker ridge north aspect observation location and dug a snow profile. Area was below the tree line and shaded but open, with a 29deg slope. Snowpack was 36cm deep, and we observed a thick faceted layer between 10 and 16cm from ground that had sintered together quite robustly. An ECT produced no result, and we were actually able to pick up the entire ECT column by hand. We repeated with a Rutschblock test (mostly for practice) which also produced no result.

The ground was unfrozen, measured at 36f, with the adjacent snowpack bottom at 32, dropping gradually to 29.6f at the surface (air temperature of 41.7f). 

We skinned up to Becker proper and around 2pm skied back to the SnowPark via the south aspect keeping high and left. By this time the snow had already become mushy in the sun, and crusted in the shade. We skied lightly to avoid the many barely-buried obstacles.