Seattle Basic SIG Snow 2 FT - Mount Baker/Easton Glacier

Snow on the road blocked access to the Schreiber’s meadow about half a mile short of the parking lot. I doubt that will melt out in the week, but it is going fast. We took the summer route up to the Railroad Grade going up. I would not recommend that. It cost us over an hour of climbing over snow obstacles and with route finding. We took the valley floor on the way out. Snow down low is going fast, and many of the snow bridges are collapsing exposing tons of hazards. That said, there’s a ton of snow higher up where recent precip fell as snow. From Friday 5/16 through Tuesday 5/20 there was roughly 3.5 inches of water equivalent, or more than three feet of fresh snow. We brought show shoes, and flotation absolutely essential that weekend. Snow was isothermal and quite waterlogged. Snow pickets set well. We did not find any open crevasses to use. I spent about half an hour probing around an obvious depression in the area we typically set up crevasse rescue exercises. While I did find a crevasse with a 300 cm probe, the shallowest breakthroughs were at 230 cm. That was too deep for us to consider digging out. We did see a large, guided group up high just below the open seracs. I don’t know for sure that they found any open crevasses, but they were stationary up there for several hours, so there may or may not be usable open crevasses up high around 7,000’. On our trip, it was warm and sun was in full effect. There were tons of loose wet avalanches all around on all steeper terrain. Down low in the meadows, snow is still covering ground, so it was too early for wildflowers. However, that snow is going fast. Snow on the road blocked access to the Schreiber’s meadow about half a mile short of the parking lot. I doubt that will melt out in the week, but it is going fast. We took the summer route up to the Railroad Grade going up. I would not recommend that. It cost us over an hour of climbing over snow obstacles and with route finding. We took the valley floor on the way out. Snow down low is going fast, and many of the snow bridges are collapsing exposing tons of hazards. That said, there’s a ton of snow higher up where recent precip fell as snow. From Friday 5/16 through Tuesday 5/20 there was roughly 3.5 inches of water equivalent, or more than three feet of fresh snow. We brought show shoes, and flotation absolutely essential that weekend. Snow was isothermal and quite waterlogged. Snow pickets set well. We did not find any open crevasses to use. I spent about half an hour probing around an obvious depression in the area we typically set up crevasse rescue exercises. While I did find a crevasse with a 300 cm probe, the shallowest breakthroughs were at 230 cm. That was too deep for us to consider digging out. We did see a large, guided group up high just below the open seracs. I don’t know for sure that they found any open crevasses, but they were stationary up there for several hours, so there may or may not be usable open crevasses up high around 7,000’. On our trip, it was warm and sun was in full effect. There were tons of loose wet avalanches all around on all steeper terrain. Down low in the meadows, snow is still covering ground, so it was too early for wildflowers. However, that snow is going fast.