Red Mountain Lookout via Indian Racetrack — Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021

I overnighted in my car down NF-60/Carson-Guler Rd, then timed the hike to get up to the lookout with a minimal amount of rainfall. I was trying to avoid wet-loose avalanche conditions and just misery of walking a long way in the cold rain (<40°F), in general.

Road Conditions

NF-65 is paved up to the Carson-Guler Rd junction (they it's primitive road after that). There are some potholes to mind along the paved section (hitting them last night alarmed me on the way in).

Some trees are partially blocking the road; according to some folks, there was a larger (4' diameter) tree that fell after I got in (due to the high winds) and was cleared by a local off-roading club.

There's a fair bit of snow/ice on the road after the NF-60/Carson-Guler Rd junction. I avoided getting stuck by picking my conditions carefully and not parking in deep snowpack. I had my janky avalanche shovel, but really didn't want to use it.

I parked <0.1 miles before the NF-60/NF-6048 junction then walked the rest of the way.

"Trail" Conditions

I walked up the road (NF-6048) following some old wheel wells carved out of the snowpack by a high coverage vehicle with snow tires.

The only things of note on the walk up were:

• There was an unexpected "creek" crossing right before the NF-6048 gate that's usually closed. GPS coordinates: 45.9198, -121.8238.
• There was a single blowdown blocking the road that would require a chainsaw/logout. The tree wasn't on wilderness land according to the USFS map I'm looking at, so chainsaws are permitted. GPS coordinates: 45.9229, -121.8227.

Snow Conditions

Snow conditions were a bit curious. Seeing as there was a lot of precipitation input in the snowpack, there was a lot of wet-loose conditions up to approximately 4.5k', where I left the road and stuck to the trees.

After that it was a mix of wet-loose conditions and storm/wind slab conditions up to the lookout in the last 300'.

I carefully picked my terrain to avoid open slopes over 25° since the view of the lookout was obscured due to fog and leveraged wide paths between trees away from tree wells and gaps near a boulder (terrain traps).

When I got closer to the lookout I recognized conditions representative of wind scouring along the south ridge and was being hit with 10mph+ sustained gusts from WSW (so, I'd expect wind loading on the ENE aspects for a while), so I pushed up the wind scoured ridge. I didn't see any cornices or noticeable wind slabbing of concern (all snow breakage was localized; didn't see pillow'ing), but my observation capabilities were limited.