Silver Peak observations

Our AIARE1 class toured up Pole Creek to check out the NE side of Silver Peak today, where we reached a high point of about 7500’ in the NE bowl. Weather throughout the day consisted of mostly cloudy skies that cleared slightly after about 2:00pm, light to moderate SW winds with some strong gusts, and variable, intermittent precipitation that varied between misty rain, graupel, and light snowfall over the course of our tour. New snow did not seem to accumulate in  many places, but in the pockets where it did it seemed to reach depths of 1-2”. We did not see blowing snow off the ridgelines above us, but we did see frequent light blowing snow on open slopes down lower around us (photo 1). 

In the open meadow between 7000’ and 7200’, there was a supportive crust that actually skied somewhat well, at least compared to the breakable crust that we found most everywhere else beyond that on our tour. The surface varied between these scoured crusts and shallow pockets of graupel and soft snow. The misting rain and intermittent snowfall on our ascent caused some annoying glopping for a while on our ascent in the morning.

We dug a quick pit (photo 2) on a NW aspect at about 7200’ (dropped pin location) and found the 12/11 facet layer about 60cm down; snow depth (HS) here was about 90-100cm. Our limited observations indicated that these facets seem to be gaining strength at this spot: they were 4F-hard, they could hold together somewhat in small snowballs, and a compression test gave no result (CTN). After our CTN result, one additional extra hard tap on the column caused an uneven fracture (BRK) in the middle of the 12/11 facet layer. 

While the skiing on our tour definitely left something to be desired, it’s not everyday that you get to ski beneath a rainbow! (photo 3)