SummitPost.org

I'm heading up to the South Palisades after the storm. The forecast is calling for up to 20 inches of snow and winds to 70mph, causing significant drifts. Thoughts on if I'll need / should be prepared with snowshoes? Planning on doing some climbing but not sure which peaks yet. Middle palisade and Norman Clyde are the likely targets.

weather report: http://www.weather.com/weather/alerts/l ... X&etn=0012

To answer my own question, yes. Snow was ~2 feet deep and powdery above 8800 feet. Crossing the boulder fields was like playing posthole minesweeper. At one point, without snowshoes, we found crawling to be more efficient and safer than attempting to cross the snow covered boulders.

SierraSummits wrote:To answer my own question, yes. Snow was ~2 feet deep and powdery above 8800 feet. Crossing the boulder fields was like playing posthole minesweeper. At one point, without snowshoes, we found crawling to be more efficient and safer than attempting to cross the snow covered boulders.

What day are these conditions from? We are planning to try Thunderbolt peak tomorrow and Friday and I was also wondering if snowshoes will be necessary.

Also, which peak did you end up doing? Besides postholing, was the snow a problem? I'm mostly concerned that the snow might make the class 3/4 sections near the top more difficult. Any information on the palisade region conditions would be helpful. Thanks

laswanso wrote:What day are these conditions from? We are planning to try Thunderbolt peak tomorrow and Friday and I was also wondering if snowshoes will be necessary.

Also, which peak did you end up doing? Besides postholing, was the snow a problem? I'm mostly concerned that the snow might make the class 3/4 sections near the top more difficult. Any information on the palisade region conditions would be helpful. Thanks

Those conditions were from sat and sun last weekend. I'm not sure what the weather has been like this week, but I'd probably bring snowshoes just in case.

We planned on climbing middle pal but were completely fried from breaking trail for miles and realized that we weren't climbing fast enough to summit, so we turned around a quarter mile from the moraine separating the glaciers. We had planned on only two days and left finger lake at 4 am sun. Coming down was significantly faster since we didn't have to route find or break new trail.

Snow was soft and powdery everywhere, cramp ons were useless. It may have crusted since though. Good luck!

Headed up the N.Fork on Saturday for an attempt on the Swiss Arete, but multiple set-backs cost us too much time on the approach. Snow on the trail approaching Sam Mack Meadow wasn't much of an issue, but everything above 11,500 was covered with at least 18" of highly variable white stuff. We packed snowshoes, and used 'em plenty; even so, it took us 2.5 hours to get from the meadow onto the glacier. Another week of sunny, warm temps up there might be enough to consolidate the new pack, but for now plan on slow going above 11k.