Observations from Rubicon Peak

Broken cloud cover greeted our arrival to Rubicon Peak this morning. A mix of sun breaks and very light snow showers were visible all around the Tahoe Basin and Desolation Wilderness Area throughout the morning hours. Ridgetop winds were moderate speed around 9am and decreased to light in speed by late morning. We saw very limited amounts of blowing snow during the moderate speed winds earlier on.

We started ascending from 6,800' with mostly supportable, occasionally breakable rain crust under about 1 inch of new snow. As we ascended we encountered increasing amounts of new snow on top of the rain crust. At 7,900' the crust was 1F hard and crumbly under about 6 inches of new snow. By 8,100' the rain crust no longer existed. We saw no signs of storm slab instability in wind protected areas below treeline.

Moving out onto the E face below the summit rocks, we encountered some minor wind slab development but no significant cracking, even in previously undercut areas. This terrain was not very heavily wind loaded today and a more significant wind slab problem could easily have existed elsewhere.

Looking out into Desolation Wilderness, we saw one new, small wet loose avalanche on the E face of Crag Peak that occurred sometime between 10 am and 11:30 am this morning. We could also see some older, lightly snow covered wet loose debris at lower elevations down around 7,600' just above Crag Lake that was probably triggered by rain on snow on Thursday.