Nordstrom

Today we went up to the Nordstrom Ridge to wave goodbye to 2025, and stick our heads in the snow once again looking for our Deep Persistent Slab problem.

It was a lovely day, inverted temperatures meant cold riding in the valley, -8 at the truck, and warm sunny riding up high (-1 at 2000m). The solar effect made little difference to the snow surface today. We observed one new wind slab avalanche occurring in extreme alpine terrain on a NE aspect of Mt Terrion, and moderate wind transport at ridgetops. We also found widespread surface hoar growth on all aspects and elevations.

Average snow depth is 100 cm at treeline, we had a dig on a lee feature near ridgetop and found 75 cm of well bonded, right side up snow sitting on a crust to ground. The Dec crust was not present in this area. We did not find facets above the Nov crust, instead we found small rounded grains that have a strong bond to the Nov crust. We had no results from an ECT and CT.

Overall we were excited to see this region filled in and rideable! We will be back with skis next time!