[pct-l] The view from here

["Joanne Lennox" <goforth@cio.net>]

I don't think being prepared is being paranoid.  Being frightened about
obstacles before evaluating them carefully is a different matter.  I have
been on Mountain climbs where the leader scatched the climb before he ever
came up against a real obstacle , believing that the route was going to be
bad and the weather was going to deteriorate without waiting to actually
see these conditions and evaluate them.

Since I will likely be going though the high Sierras in May not June, I
think it is especially appropriate to check out River Crossings.

At any rate this is what I see developing:

The desert has almost no snow ( Mt. Baldy at l0,000 is bare)

The HIgh Sierras south of Tuoloume is well below average

North of tuolume , all the way to Lassen there is above average snow

From Burney to Ashland there are areas of the route that have deep snow
pack, but about 50%  of that portion of the PCT is at lower altitude.( From
Belden to Castella most of the terrain is below 6,000, and from Castella to
Ashland, there is a lot of the trail between 6-7,000 feet.)

From Asland through to Manning there is a lot of snow

The snow melts much faster in the Southern Sierras than it does in Oregon
and Washington.
(Tuolume Meadows the snow is usually gone by June 1st,  at Squaw Valley in
most years the snow is usually gone by mid June, in all years it is gone by
August 1st; In washington many of the sensors are in Highway pases, and I
note that Harts pass still had 36 inches of snow on July 2nd in a heavy
snow year and it is well East of the main Cascade crest; from  my
experience it is not unusual to have snow stay all summer at elevations
above 5,000 when there is a heavy snowpack and when the weather is cool.)

La nina predictions have Northern California, Oregon, and Washington having
cooler than normal temperatures (??).  I am not much of a meteorologist,
but last year  Washington had a mild Winter , a normal rainy spring, a dry
summer , and a dry autumn.  Can we expect a Heavy snowpack, a cool ( and
wet?) spring, and summer?

View from here: the Southern High Sierras is the least of it; the 1,500
miles North from Tuolume could be largely snow covered if the snow
continues to fall and the spring and summer is cool.

What happened to hikers in l991,  ( the Snow was high in Washington, and
low in the Southern Sierras.  Unfortunately the l997 data indicates that
the Snow was high in Washington, but below normal in Oregon and Northern
California). The Scenic trails snow page does not have historical graph
data for Oregon or the North half of California.  I have been unable to
figure out all the abbreviations used in the historical archives of the
NRCS pages.

Goforth
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