Spring-like snowpack on Mt. Lola

We went to Mt. Lola today to have a look and the existing snowpack on northerly aspects and to look at the overall snow cover distribution in this area in the 7,000' to 9,000' elevation range. There is only thin patchy snow cover of 6 inches or less on N-NE-E aspects in the 7,000' to 7,600' elevation range. Above 7,800' up to our highpoint of travel at 8,500', we encountered a mostly continuous snowpack 1 to 1.5 feet deep on N-NE aspects. For E aspects it appeared that continuous snow cover did not begin until above 8,500'.

While on snow, we found ski supportable conditions with just over an inch of surface wet snow of corn like consistency. We dug and snowpit at 8,410' on and NNE aspect near the ridgetop but still in below treeline terrain. The snowpack had been previously wet from top to bottom at this location and was without signs of problematic weak layers. This appeared similar to other areas we pole probed along our approach.

We were able to descend in ski supportable corn like conditions until we ran out of snow at our lower elevation limit. It basically felt like a late spring snowpack at the wrong time of year.