Wydaho Snow: 2.29.16: Little Rake Leap Year
Today Tom Rice and I crossed the Snake en route to our first foray down the Little Rake. Despite it's diminutive name the line is only a few hundred feet shorter than the Rake proper.
Temps never dropped below freezing last night in the SR canyon up to ~6000'. As such things were sloppy and sloggy down low. There was a dusting of fresh down low from a few days ago and ~6" of fresh with a lot of graupel where we topped out at 8300'.
The skiing was great on N facing slopes that don't catch a lot of sun down to ~7000'. Below that elevation we ran into a lot of avy debris and dust on crust before things became total slush around ~6000'.
It was forecast to snow today but it seems to be too warm for that to happen at all but the highest local elevations. It looks like the grandest Tetons are catching some snow today but no such luck in the peaks surrounding Star Valley.
The heat wave is forecast to continue for the next week with daytime highs in Alpine, WY approaching or above 50*F daily and overnight lows in the mid 30s. Bummer.
Hopefully the geoengineers decide a real Wyoming winter would benefit their military/industrial/economic complex in some way. As it stands right now the whole country is thawing out well before spring generally arrives naturally. Strange days.