Warm weather and Variable Snow on Stevens Peak

Calm winds and warm temperatures gave today a spring-like feel. The sun also keeps climbing higher in the sky and getting stronger each day. We expected to find soft wet snow on the sunny slopes of Stevens Peak. Turns out, we also found moist snow on E-facing aspects. The E aspects have not transitioned to full melt/freeze conditions like the SE-S-SW aspects, and the snow on these more east-facing slopes gets sticky when it warms up. We also ascended through a few NE-facing areas where patches of soft surface snow linger in areas sheltered from the wind. This soft, surface snow keeps getting weaker on these sheltered shady slopes.

Once we got above treeline, we stuck to the sun-exposed SE-S-SW aspects. The sunshine and warm temperatures had caused the top 1-2 inches of snow to become wet and soft by noon on these slopes. Mini-penitentes that look like large corn flakes existed on most of the sunny slopes that we traveled on. As we got down into the lower elevations, we did start to see more wet snow. We could trigger small pinwheels of wet snow on steep S-facing test slopes in areas below 8200 ft. These wet snow instabilities remained small and isolated.