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A Golden State Warm Up

High temps in the West, have the snowpack melting fast. Here’s a Sierra update.

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The High Route Editors

The Central Sierra Snow Lab (CSSL) posted a pretty, though alarming, graph on their social feeds yesterday, March 18th. See for yourself.  The dearth of snow in the West has found much of the winter in the region a make-do affair. For those of us who begrudge the start of trailrunning or mountain biking season,…

Response

  1. Spencer Dillon

    Yeah the challenge has definitely been temps. Between a lot of rain and chronic shorts weather, there isn’t much left, as you saw when you were here. This means that total season snowfall is not at all indicative of coverage. Perhaps what is new to me living here is that pretty much all the snow came in two apocalyptic storm cycles (followed by a ton of rain). Which meant only a small handful of powder days, almost all too deep to ski (and quite scary, touring-wise).

    Friends on the eastside (and my recent experiences in tahoe) report 16000′ freeze lines the last few days and knee-deep mush at 7am on the high peaks. Even if there is snow on the ground, it is both unpleasant and unsafe to ski, especially when it comes to the terrain the eastside is famous for. ESAC just published an obs from Independence, somewhat far south (e.g. drier) but in ‘couloir country’ for sure. the coverage there is rather grim. I’m sure it is elsewhere, but we haven’t gotten a flake since the castle peak avalanche.

    I skied some amazing corn in the last two weeks, but the trauma of this heatwave is going to stick with our snowpack for a while before it locks up again if the temps finally drop. And by then, everything will be melted.

    Welcome to the future.

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