It was raining lightly up to about 1700' with wet snow falling above that. Winds were light with cloud cover varying from obscured to overcast. Temperature was 40 F at the parking lot at 1000'.
Observation: Turnagain
Location: Tincan trees
Toured up to treeline on Tincan. Visibility was in and out and there was a breakable crust on the surface so we elected not to go higher.
Weather
Snow surface
Wet snow on surface with a 1" (2-3 cm) melt freeze crust. The surface was less crusty and wet snow layer was deeper at lower elevations.
Snowpack
We dug a quick pit at 2200' to see how deeply the wet snow layer had penetrated from the recent rain. The total snow depth was about 80cm. On the surface there was a melt freeze crust layer which was about 1" (2-3 cm) thick with another 2-3" (5 cm) of moist and wet snow right below that. The rest of the snowpack was right side up and fairly homogeneous. With the exception of a 1/2" (1 cm) thick melt freeze crust in the middle of the snowpack. We did not perform any stability tests.
Probing the pit location with runnels and a pinwheel in the background. 11.25.2023
Widespread wet loose and glide avalanches on Penguin Ridge. 11.25.2023
Closeup of Penguin Ridge. 11.25.2023
Recent glide avalanche on Orca. 11.25.2023
Wet loose avalanche on Bird Ridge.
Glide cracks just above alder line on Seattle Ridge, just south of the uptrack.
Glide release on 4940' near the Johnson Pass TH.
Definitely wet down low but still good coverage for November
2-3" of wet crusty snow near the surface above a fairly homogeneous snowpack.
View looking up to TIncan Common
At upper elevations the snow coverage looks good.
Cloud layers moving in and out throughout the day.
John probing. Photo: John Sykes 11.25.2023