It snowed lightly throughout the day. Visibility ranged from total whiteout to broken skies. Temperatures were in the 20s with calm to light winds.
Observation: Turnagain
Location: Spokane Creek
Toured up the lower portion of Lipps and then into Spokane Creek. Visibility was in and out throughout the day so we just toured up the valley to about 3000′ and skied back down.
Weather
Snow surface
Below 2500' there was about 6-10" of soft snow on the surface. The alders were ski-able, but there were some sketchy sections where the branches were just below the surface and you could easily hook a tip.
Above 2500' there was a mix of soft snow, wind effected snow, and some areas with melt freeze crust on the surface.
Snowpack
We dug some pits at 2100' on the SW shoulder of Lipps. The snowpack was about 3' deep with soft snow on the surface that gradually got firmer with depth. We did not find any alarming weak layers and did not have any propagation on our extended column tests.
Higher alpine areas were much more variable, with snowpack depths ranging from 6" to 4'+. In the shallower areas there was weak faced snow on the ground. We decided to forgo our ski objective because of time constraints and the snowpack was becoming much more variable as we climbed up a ridge line.
Pretty good coverage skinning up in the forest.
Alders are partly laid down, but there are a lot of areas where the snow is really thin on top.
90cm deep right side up snowpack with a couple of density change layers from different storm interfaces.
Visibility started to improve just as we made our way up Spokane Creek.
Alpine ridge line with variable snow depth and weak snow on the ground in thin spots.
Breif period of good lighting on upper Spokane Creek
Lots of alder trap doors on the ski out!