It brings a lark to your hand

Sadness on Hood this weekend. Thoughts, as always, are with the climbers, rescuers, and families. May the mountain let the living come home.

On the way into the lab today, the impending formation of our familiar convergence zone was apparent. Clouds were wrapping around both sides of the Olympics, with clear sky between. They’re overhead now, and a fine sunset is delivering an encore on our week and a half of cold clear weather. Whomever’s cranking the climate knob’s obviously having fun – a series of warm fronts/bands are set to roll through this week. The first will make it snow. The next will make it snow a lot, and the third will kick off an avalanche cycle.

Reports are finally coming in and documenting the extensive faceting of the snowpack that normally comes with december high pressure. It should be a neat week in the hills.

G’bye clear sky – see you in January!

It’s easier to look for Yeti in the dark.

Message boards are starting to light up with discussions of skiing mountains near routes I covet as first descents. With the aftereffects of the summer’s injury and the present effects of physics research, I’m not sure I’ll be strong enough, physically and mentally, to go after them this winter. All I can do is train and hope, both for good conditions and that nobody else will try, and that feels wrong.

Bruce Tremper has had a lot to say about avalanches, but I think this is just as appropriate for the sudden, jagged, and rarely visited invernal peaks of the North Cascades:

“as soon as I heard that the northwest face of Gobblers Knob
had pulled out wall-to-wall with a huge, wet slab avalanche,
I grabbed my skis and headed up — alone. It’s important, I think,
to be alone and the first to arrive at the aftermath of big avalanches.
I climbed over the 30-foot-high debris pile, skinned up the
gouged-to-the-dirt bobsled run of the avalanche’s track and
dug profiles all along the half-mile wide fracture. the stupendous
power, the destruction, the horror, the puniness of people
in the face of it… to be first and alone is essential.” — Tremper

For me, at least in the North Cascades in winter, alone is now modified to include a small party. Grandeur is even better shared.

It’s good to be near mountains.

They help put things in perspective.

0.3 milliseconds, glacier to eyeball.