Big Sheep and South Ridge outing

[director]

Today (Saturday) Julian and I wandered around Big Sheep and South Ridge. We even met Charla and Jeff in the SCS parking lot. They were going somewhat more northerly; sounded like Whitebark Ridge or something.

Julian and I had a very pleasant day skating on the canal path all the way to the Big Sheep Basin. Then we skinned up the creek NWesterly and hung a right on up toward Stockdrive Saddle. On the way we looked in a few different aspects for changes in the upper snowpack. Not much new to report from this weeks summary. One of our missions was to find at all costs some buried surface hoar up there. It almost alluded us. But, just south of Stockdrive Saddle at 7500' on a NE aspect we found some. However it almost alluded us again. In two pits, not more than 100' apart, were different layers. One pit had obvious sensistive surface hoar, the other had a very well bonded homogenous snowpack. The pit with the surface hoar also had at least one other layer with a sensitive interface. Beware.

Skiing was not to be written home about. However, the southerly aspects warmed beautifully to a creamy corn snow by about 1:30pm. The northerly aspects had some stiffer powder which was pleasant but intermixed with a surface crust periodically where the sun touched the snow briefly during these warm sunny days.

Congrats to Julian in completing his Level 2 avalanche certification last week in the Sawtooths of Idaho.

Keith