Public Observation

Observation Details

Observations

Snowshoed up the Birch Lake trail out of Big Pine today to see what the snow was doing and how the coverage looked. Turns out snowshoeing is hard work! We parked at 6400' just below the trailhead. At 6400' there was ~1' of wet, heavy snow. We hiked up to 7500' before turning around. Overall, the coverage down low was very good, for low elevation Owens Valley skiing that is, sharks abound but you don't have to hike and I feel that with care you might even have fun!

Weather - It was snowing heavily all afternoon. Down low it was warm, near or slightly above freezing and we got totally soaked. I had a small river running down my jacket. Up higher, above 7k' it was much cooler, and we started to dry out. The snow here wasn't the cement we found at 6400', and it was below freezing. Over the three hours of hiking it snowed around 3" on my truck, and more up higher. Our tracks were pretty well covered within an hour around 7k'. It was calm down low, but when we got onto the mini ridge at 7500' winds became strong with definite snow transport.

Snow - ~1' @ 6400' wet heavy cement, single layer and ~90cm @ 7500' new storm snow on a rain crust with what looked like it was facets below. The facets look like they got wet in the storm and when I poked around in them they had refrozen together. The ridge line marked on the map was where we stopped, and it was wind scoured with much less than 90cm of snow. The snow at 7500' was covering most of the sage, but they are obviously trap doors to be careful around.

Takeaways - 1) It looks like there is enough snow to ski out of the Owens:) 2) Higher and in avalanche terrain I would be concerned about wind slabs. Lots of wind with lots of snow to transport. I would also be worried about storm slabs, given that it was snowing at least an inch an hour at the lowest elevation in our hike today. Finally, the structure for a deeper instability is in the cards, however we only poked around in the snow in one place and didn't go very high so I don't have any info on what the layering looks like up higher.

Signs of Unstable Snow