Oregon Hikers

texasbb wrote: ↑

June 7th, 2018, 3:18 pm

Aneroid Lake SNOTEL

I read 40 inches of snow at Aneroid Lake (dark red line), and that it is a normal snow year (light red line) for that location.

Dark red line is the precipitation total over the water year, which starts Oct 1st. The dark blue line tracks Snow Water Equivalent, which measures the inches of water still held in the snowpack at the site. It went to zero in June. However, the SNOTEL site is in an open meadow and gets a fair bit of sun, so its recording zero inches of SWE doesn't really tell the whole story about snow in the area, such as lingering drifts under tree cover or on north-facing slopes. There could be 18" to 24" of consolidated snow at some spot within 100 yards of the measuring device.

I just got back from a trip there. I found no snow on the trail up Thorp Creek, or on the ridgeline approaches to Sacajawea Peak summit (9,838') or Hurwal Divide summit. However, there was lots of snow in north facing basins, couloirs, and cols to the south of me. My guess is that if your route passes over a pass with a north facing slope, you'd have to get up and over that snow. I saw snow below 8,000', it was just in those more snow-retentive sites.

Looking south from Sacajawea, over Matterhorn: