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cascade pass conditions


ivan

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the ne face/buttress - clmbed half wth oleg the other day - got halfway up when hgh wnd and nasty mpendng weather compelled gong home for xmas chores frown.gif the retreat down the buttress was ndeed exctng!

 

road up to mle 20 - not much snow at the pass - the cj glacer loos fawng dsgustng

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there was ice climbing to be sure - but plenty of brush to pull on in between! most of the ice we encountered was thin and it was generally a lot faster to climb aroudn it - we were following the straitest line to put us on the buttress itself - the bigger ice flows are off left and didn't tae us anywhere we really wanted to go. oh yeah i'm a big pussy leading on steep ice too.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Baker:

this storm cycle has been extremely unusual. We have received approximately 112 inches of total snowfall in a very short amount of time--with most of this amount of snow falling on Friday at a warm 33 degrees. This is more snow in such a short time than has been measured in our recorded history at Mt. Baker. Also, the cooling trend that was expected to happen Friday and yesterday to help stabilize the snow pack in the ski area has just started to happen in the past few hours.

 

Therefore, we are going to wait to reopen the ski area until after the forecasted rain event of Monday and Monday night comes in. On Monday, the freezing level is expected to rise to 5500 to 6000 feet with precipitation, which we are now waiting for as we expect this will help stabilize the snow pack.

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to confirm that there's lots of snow (and earn our super-slogger merit badge) josh n' i tried humping it up to snowking in the midst of the pouring rain friday - what started in rain turned to snow and rain soaked brush then light snow over crazy steep forest to stupid deep uber-unconsolidated powder at which time our rate of progress slowed to about 200 yards an hour, at which time we began the camp out blaza-athon - simply put, there is a fucking crazy amount of deep, wet, hate-fuck snow above 4000 feet that makes travel of any sort amazingly difficult. there is fun to be had though if you bring it w/ you!

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At what elevation did you start to encounter a real snowpack? You said it "quickly" became very deep, but was it sparse or bare to 3,000'? Higher?

 

I have not been out enough to really know, but it seems we may have a thin snowpack at low elevations. City Light shows less than average overall water stored in watershed This could be a good year for winter ski and climbing access.

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