Valdez Snow Observations
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A relatively small fraction of terrain often frequented by backcountry travelers has a professional daily avalanche forecast available. For this reason, the Valdez Avalanche Center encourages users to share what they see. Please contribute your avalanche, snow and weather observations in the comments below. It could help save lives!
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Enjoyed the sun the past three days. Yesterday – Skinned up Small Creek to cirque north of Dimond, then up and down the next three ridges trending northeastish. Witnessed two avalanches come down due to the sun – one ran several hundred vertical, the other perhaps 1500 vertical. I was pushing stuff down at my feet on sunny aspects between 35 and 48 degrees. I took this picture of Dimond’s east side just after watching the C shaped slide about 1/3 of the way in from the looker’s left edge of the picture.
Small Creek probably has about a week left before become an unpleasant bushwhack. I wouldn’t trust some of the snow bridges without an overnight freeze. Both the cirque north of Dimond and northeast of Dimond had existing crowns from natural slab avalanches of the most recent snow.
Wednesday climbed and skied the northeast face and then the west facing ramp off the mountain labelled 6513 on the topo, hitting various slopes up to 49 degrees. By Wednesday new snow that hadn’t naturalled and wasn’t in danger of sun induced slides was stable and skied well. The sun was causing plenty of point release naturals.
Tuesday skinned from the 24 mile curve for a couple of laps on the Berlin Wall. Some wind slab along the ridge. Lots of sun caused point releases.
In general, new stuff starts coming down the second the sun hits it. The spring bulletin provides an excellent summary of the general conditions. There’s plenty of fun skiing out there, but I’ve specifically avoided climbing anything that had any chance of sun induced avalanche, which isn’t always easy with 18 hours of daylight.
5/7/12. Skied Schoolbus after work and it was great! New snow from the weekend was still kinda light and fluffy up top. This new snow is definitely a different density than old snow below it and I was getting Q2 and Q3 handshears at this junction. I wanted to get another 800 feet higher (back-side of Goodwills), but actually bailed because things were getting more slabbly and reactive on what seemed to be a freshly windloaded N, NW aspect. Still plenty of snow up there and conditions were great.
Thanks for the report. Much obliged. BTW, the NWS is talking of 18″ of snowfall over the next few days.
Sweet. If the weather clears, I’ll take advantage of that 18 inches.
May 5, 2012 Schoolbus 8:15-10am
overcast, moderate NE wind, light blowing snow above 3000′
Quick jaunt up a ways on Schoolbus. No new avalanche activity observed, but visibility wasn’t great. +3C at the car, 0C near 4000′. The snowpack was frozen and strong with just the new snow above 3500′ to worry about. I found 15cm new snow drifted as deep as 40cm on lee gulley sidewalls. There was a 3cm pencil- crust (from Saturday’s warming) on top of the 4finger-1finger windslab. The crust cracked and broke as you skied it, but the windslab beneath seemed to be bonding to the old surface-moderate Q2/RP shear at that interface, no reaction to ski cut. I probed around and found >300cm on many aspects above 3000′ elevation.
April 29 8-11am Nick’s Happy Valley
3cm new snow above 4000′ covers firm old surfaces. Moderate north wind near the pass and peaks was moving it a bit. Temp at 10am at 5560′ was -4.5C. Probed snow depth on the glacier at 5200′ was 325cm and 315cm at 4100′. Alpine snow appears structurally strong. Old avalanches to size 2 had come off the west wall of lower Nicks, most likely during the heat of one of those warm sunny days in the last couple weeks. White light made it a ski-by- brail, with the best turns up high in the hollows where the wind was blowing in the new snow, then dust on crust, then crunchy corned surface by the bottom. Temp at car on return had already risen to +4C with overcast skies.