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Re: [pct-l] Thru-hiker Nth of Kennedy Mdws and conditions Nth of the Sierras

On Mon, 08 Jun 1998 10:36:56 -0700 Greg Hummel <ghummel@hydrogenburner.com> wrote:
>Charlie asked:
>
><Has anyone heard from any thru-hiker who is currently hiking north of Kennedy
><Meadows? If so, are they continuing thru the Sierras, or did they skip ahead?
><To where? 
>
>I spoke with Martina Osterloh and Brian Dickson last night from Kernville.
>They have reports of serious snow in the Sierras and further north.  From
>7,000 feet in the Tehachapis they could see solid snow up around Whitney.

Weekend before last (May 31) I flew along the southern half of the
JMT and got a good look at the snow from 2,000' above the ridges.
"Solid" is a pretty accurate description.

The basin around Guitar Lake is completely covered with snow; the
lake is snow-covered but its outline is visible so some melting
must be starting.  Bighorn Plateau is covered with snow.  The basin
south of Forrester Pass is solid snow, as are the ridge and basin
on the north side of the pass; the lake on the north side is
covered but its outline is visible.  Center Basin is solid snow.
Rae Lakes and the surrounding basin are solid snow.  Palisade Basin
is solid snow; Upper Palisade Lake is not visible at all but the
outline of the lower one is.  Mather and Muir Passes of course are
completely covered.  We didn't see the hut on Muir so it might be
buried or maybe we just missed it.

Seldon Pass and at least the upper part of Bear Creek are
completely covered; I didn't get a good look at the lower section.
Silver Pass, Chief Lake, Squaw Lake, etc. are also solid snow; the
outlines of the lakes are visible.  (Edison Lake looked to be
ice-free [Butch?], in contrast to a couple of weeks earlier when it
was still pretty frozen.)

Basically all of the high areas are covered in solid snow pack.
The only sizable areas that weren't totally covered were either
near-vertical or high and flat (like Diamond Mesa and the top of
Whitney) where presumably the wind has blown snow away.  I didn't
really look at the lower sections of the trail (like the Woods
Creek bridge) so can't say how low the solid snowpack goes.

Of course this aerial survey doesn't give any info about how deep
the snow is, or what's melting and turning into runoff.  But it
sure isn't hikable now!  On the other hand, the surface looked
pretty uniformly white so I wouldn't expect there to be a lot of
sun cups to give skis trouble.

(If this kind of info is useful I could probably do the run again
in a week or two when more folks are getting near the high
country.)

  -les  niles@parc.xerox.com
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