More Blowing Snow than Expected on Andesite Peak

The snow had stopped falling on Andesite Peak by 11:00, and the clouds had begun to break up, letting some sunshine through into the area. When I looked up, I could see the remaining clouds moving quickly, indicating strong NE winds. While traveling in the sheltered below treeline terrain, I measured new snow amounts of about 2 inches. This fresh snow was cold and light. I stopped to chat with a group from TNSAR coming out from Frog Lake, and they said they had found widespread "dust on crust" conditions. They also mentioned that some upper elevations might have gotten closer to 3 inches of new snow. I also encountered a Level 1 avalanche class as they were starting a compression test. Their test did not produce any unstable results. I continued up and saw no signs of instability in terrain sheltered from the winds.

As I started to get into more open near treeline terrain, I encountered blowing snow. The mid-slope winds were strong enough to move snow and form small snow drifts. These drifts had grown to about 8 inches in depth at their deepest, although they quickly got more shallow just a couple of feet from the rollovers they formed behind. Some of them cracked when I stepped on them.

Higher on the ridge, I encountered more blowing snow. It looked like the NE winds were harvesting old snow from lower on the slope rather than just blowing the new snow around. In some places, the wind slabs formed on the W and SW aspects of Andesite were more significant than expected, up to 10-12 inches thick. These also got thinner just a few feet from the ridge, but the largest ones were still 4 inches thick, 6 to 10 ft downslope. Ski kicks triggered shooting cracks on these wind slabs. The amount of blowing snow decreased some in the afternoon, even though the winds remained strong enough to push me around. Scoured snow surfaces existed along the ridge's top and on the peak's windward side (E-NE aspects) with large sastrugi and wind-sculpted channels in the snow surface.