Poor overnight refreeze and deep wet snow on Jakes Peak.

We toured Jakes Peak this morning to gauge last night's suspected poor refreeze and to observe changes in the upper snowpack on NE-E-SE aspects as this warm spell progresses. As expected, last night's refreeze was very weak in this area both on open slopes and under forest canopy.  Only the top 1 inch of the snowpack had refrozen and was 1F hard at best. By 9:30-10 am, any time we stepped off of an existing skin track, conditions were marginally ski supportable and boot penetration was deep at 9-12 inches into wet snow.

A view from the summit towards Desolation Wilderness revealed very little in the way of natural wet loose avalanches. Once we started to descend E and NE aspect terrain off the summit, it was clear that conditions were ripe for human triggered wet loose avalanches. By 11 am we were encountering areas of deep wet snow that were not supportable for travel on skis. Anticipating point release style wet loose avalanches rather than propagating slabs, we focused our travel on micro terrain sections of the slope that were less than 35 degrees in steepness and did our best to minimize overhead hazard from the terrain above us. Were were able to trigger pinwheels up to 2 feet in diameter and a small wet loose avalanche on ENE to NE aspect terrain. SE aspect terrain was more supportable with the greatest instability on the ENE to NE aspect terrain we traveled. Conditions changed little over the 6,800' to 9,200' elevation range we covered today.

We were able to briefly get onto the edge of some shaded, more NNE aspect terrain at around 8,300' where hand pits found the remains of the old Feb 14 facet about 6 inches below the snow surface. Here only the top inch of the snowpack had undergone previous melt-freeze. The cold, dry snow rounded grains above the Feb 14 layer were 1F hard and the Feb 14 layer was 4F to 4F+ hard. Free water had not yet reached the Feb 14 layer at this location. This layer is still in the back of our minds for the potential of a single event, isolated wet slab avalanche to occur during this warm spell.