Snow, sleet, hail, wind

[Ellen]

Howdy All

Team Artic Wolf was thwarted by the weather today. It was snowing when we started and snowing when we finished. Got to about 9300 feet when a 50 mph wind blinded us with blowing ice and Lance called it. Headed back the Sid Davis drainage to the tram. We had wet snow, hail or sleet the entire time.

Tomorrow shows a 30% chance of snow (today was 100% chance of precipitation). Wind chill will drop the temperature to near zero on top. Looks like a much better day for a summit attempt. Any takers?

Miles of smiles,
Ellen

[calicokat]

Myself and Mark were planning on being on the first tram up tomorrow morning...are you planning an attempt tomorrow Ellen

[tinaballina]

it was harsh conditions for sure but a great experience and good company

[EMan]

Ellen,

What was the condition of the snowpack, pour favor? Were you tromping with 'pons or snowshoes? As always, I'm contemplating skis of some sort.
Perhaps Brent can shed some light on that wisdom....

[guest]

Hi EMan,
Surface conditions were quite good, 4-6 new inches of granular snow, sometimes contacting the harder lower layer, but always good traction.
There are nice deep (2+ ft) of drifts in the back country too.
The issue was the tiny hail like snow / rain coming at your face from all angles, plus heavy low clouds making nav a bitch.
Cramp-ons not needed, snowshoes indeed, or, skiis, but you have to be a good skinner or ski climber,I'd probably shoe up, ski down.
Have fun, don't stay too late or you may have mass crowds to deal with.

Hi Ellen & Tina, sorry we didn't get to hang more, we made it a bit past Tam & began dreaming of food & hot drinks, although Steve is going through withdrawals for not summitting, he couldn't stop yelling for ya'll, he wanted to drag all our ass' up!
ss

[Ellen]

Howdy CalicoKat

Ah, you know me too well Yes, I will make another summit bid tomorrow. See you on the first tram. At least we came back the drainage, so there should be some sort of track to go up tomorrow to Tamarack. I will be surprised if our tracks are completely covered.

I considered doing something in the Baldy area but am concerned the traffic will be heinous coming back due to the new snowfall. Also don't know the conditions of the road.

As long as we grab a tram down by 3 PM, we should be OK. I am hoping the SuperBowl will keep people home.

We saw some very oddly dressed people snowshoeing as we came back to the ranger station.

Please bring your camera -- it is amazing out there right now.

Howdy EMan

Always love seeing your smiling face -- hope you can make it. I defer to Scott Scott regarding ski conditions.

Howdy Scott2,

No worries -- I couldn't keep up with you You're right about the navigation issues with the fog and constant snow, etc.

You guys can always come back out tomorrow and break trail for us

Miles of smiles,
Ellen

[calicokat]

Getting everything ready as we speak....see you in the morning...hopefully the trail breaking isn't too bad

[Ellen]

Howdy CalicoKat Jim

We should be fine as long as we go up the Sid Davis drainage to Tamarack -- we pounded out a pretty good track coming back that way. I'm still not exactly sure what we did on the way out The GPS track of our route would probably show us going in circles.

See you tomorrow

Miles of smiles,
Ellen

[bluerail]

Ellen, sorry didnt get to spend more time with you today, happy anniversary girl. I was really amazed at how quickly the trail was getting covered by the snow today. Have a good one tomorrow.

[sdtrackrunner]

EMan - Sorry for the late info... snowpack was kinda weird today. Like Ellen said, a lot of the new stuff fell as sleet, hail, and graupel. It was much warmer out than I expected, even up high. We dug a pit on the east face and found a well defined ice layer under about 8 inches of fresh junk. The layer fails easily during a compression test so we agreed not to ski anything steeper than about 25 degrees, which still leaves most of the east face below miller saddle open. Don't know if I would have gone for it given more windslab or heavier new snow on top, like there may be tomorrow. The new stuff skied a little on the grabby side... didn't really fall as powder. It was slightly tricky skiing but still fun. We were able to skin all the way to the summit no problem in about 3 hours and change. Our track was already gone on the way down though.

A few photos from the day...
http://brentcoe.smugmug.com/Skiing-Alpi ... ki-262010/

-Brent