Lundy Canyon - South Facing chutes

Posted April 18th, 2010 by joshf

Location

United States
38° 1' 37.0776" N, 119° 17' 24.5472" W
Date and time of observation: 
April 18, 2010 - 3:47pm
Region: 
Lundy Canyon Area
Observation Type: 
Snowpack
Route: 

From lundy lakes road closure, biked up road to resort, skinned up canyon to base of SSE facing chutes and up chutes to ridge south of Buro Lake, back down.  *note: best to stay on south side of Mill Creek until you are directly below chutes.

Weather Observations
More detailed information about the weather: 

Warm, calm winds.  For most of day high clouds were in and out. which in one sense cuts down the intensity of the sun resulting in less warming of the snowpack but in another way re-radiates heat back down to the snowpack.  The net results of this cloud effect depends on the slope aspect. 

Comments: 

Some debris and slide evidence from yesterday on most aspects, mostly all shallow point releases.  Largest slide seen happened today on a north facing 40 degree steep gully, ~9500', which ran over 1000', again started as a shallow surface instability but entrained a decent amount of snow...enough to atleast partially bury someone.  I believe the high clouds had a good deal to do with this slide, as north facing terrain recieves relatively less direct sun light, but recieves the same amount of heat re-rediated from high clouds as any other slope aspect. 
While boot packing below 9000' mid morning we encountered some areas of knee deep penetration (mostly aspects with some east exposure), but above 9000' boot penetration was 6" or less.  Above 10500' crampons made travel very easy.  We skiied down south facing terrain from a highpoint of 11200' to 8600' at 12:00pm.  Ski penetration gradully deepend at the lower elevations, but not past several inches.  Later in the day this penetration would probably have increased, and stability would likely become a greater concern.  Again, it seems these high clouds tended to overall lessen the amount of energy south facing slopes receive, but increase the amount of energy north facing slopes recieve.  There was not even any surface sloughing resulting from our turns on these 35-45 degree slopes, even at the lower elevations.  Overall great spring skiing!       

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