Pyramid December 2015

[Philip]

I hope this thread has a chance to become relevant given the crappy predictions for this winter.

Anyway, here goes nothing...

Saturday Dec 5

Pyramid was actually awesome today. The light was pretty flat and a few graupel squalls moved through making visibility off-and-on, but the snow in the north bowl was undeniably superb. There is probably 12-18" of new, reasonably light and evenly distributed coastal "powder" in the north bowl with a bit more in the gut and a bit less on the headwall, but it was seriously some of the best snow I have seen up there in a LONG time. The weather tomorrow is supposed to be a little rough with clouds and precip (mixed rain and snow on the upper mountain) but fairly light winds from the east. If you can deal with the weather, the snow should still be good on Sunday. I didn't even bother looking into the south bowl since the north bowl was so good.

Early season conditions exist with thin coverage in a lot of areas, and while I did ride all the way down to the creek in the middle of the Jibber Bowl, it was getting pretty tracked up and thin by that point. Still, it's worth a trip up there if you aren't in a whiteout. That said, it was warming up as I left and since we are in the fall stage of mountain weather, the temp gradient from the coast up to the peaks isn't that steep yet.

I hiked up to the first spruce knob at 1000' and then skinned from there. The trail had enough snow but off the trail was still a minefield of grass and salmonberries:



There were still thick layers of snow on the spruce trees half way up the Jibber Bowl indicating the temps had stayed fairly cold:



The snow was surprisingly unaffected by wind on most aspects:



Getting ready to drop into the north bowl headwall for my first run of the season:

[Philip]

yr.no gives very detailed (3-hour block) forecasts for any major geographic feature, including Pyramid Mtn. I think this forecast is for the peak, so conditions lower on the mountain will be a bit warmer, but it might give you an idea of what is happening up there relative to the weather in town.

yr.no Pyramid Mtn forecast

It shows wind speed and direction, precip (blue bars), precip type (the little pictures of clouds with rain or snowflakes), temp (red=above freezing, blue=below freezing), barometric pressure (green line), and multiple cloud layers in the grey waves at the top.

[brooks]

How does yr.no know? Spooky amount of knowledge on that website. They can peg the rain in Juneau to the half hour.

[Andy Schroeder]

Andy here. Haven't posted in awhile.

Pyramid was quite nice today. Ocean effect snow coming in from the northwest settled in the gut of the south bowl. The light was flat throughout the afternoon but once I tracked it up once I could see well enough to really ski it. I saw 8 other riders (mostly snowboarders) but only recognized one face. I must be getting old. Driving out, the light was hitting the south bowl really nice and whoever was still up there around 4 pm had some great runs.