Skies started off mostly sunny but were mostly cloudy by the afternoon. Temperatures were in the 40's to 50 F in the parking lot, and in the upper 30's F up high. Winds were calm.
We rode around Seattle Ridge today, getting a look at the extent of wet avalanche activity so far, and checking out surface conditions on all aspects. We rode north to Pyramid, stopping by the weather station and passing through Main (1st) Bowl, Jr’s (2nd), 3rd, and 4th bowls along the way. We noted widespread wet avalanche activity from the past few weeks, including a lot of wet loose and glide avalanches and a handful of smaller wet slabs. We have yet to see a big wet slab cycle this season.
Skies started off mostly sunny but were mostly cloudy by the afternoon. Temperatures were in the 40's to 50 F in the parking lot, and in the upper 30's F up high. Winds were calm.
We have gotten around 4" or so of new snow this week, which was settled into about 2" of moist snow on northerly aspects and has already gone through a melt/freeze cycle on all others. Below 1500' the surface crusts were just barely supportable by around 11:30 this morning, and were starting to get pretty loose by around 4 p.m.
All slopes had a supportable crust above around 2000'. Southerly aspects were heating up later in the day, and the snow under the crust was very wet and sloppy. Northerly aspects have had little to no avalanche activity at least since the latest snowfall that we could see.
We did not dig any pits today.
Wet snow avalanches on the front side of Seattle Ridge. These have been happening for a couple weeks now, and we're getting to the point where it is hard to tell what is fresh and what is older. 05.05.2023
The south face of Eddie's has had the most extensive glide avalanche activity of any of the ridgelines on Turnagain Pass. 05.05.2023
Debris from loose wet, wet slab, and glide avalanche on the south faces of Eddie's and Shark's Fin. 05.05.20203
Looking across the highway towards the northwest facing terrain near Tincan, Sunburst, and Pastoral in the background. There was hardly any avalanche activity that we could see on northerly aspects. 05.05.2023
Looking back down into Main Bowl. 05.05.2023
Jr's/Pyramid. 05.05.2023
The glide cracks on Repeat Offender continue to move and grow. There are a lot of new glide cracks opening up on the front side of Seattle Ridge in general. 05.05.2023
Looking back across the Turnagain Arm towards Girdwood from Pyramid. 05.05.2023