[pct-l] snow between Old Station and Ashland....

[Georgi Heitman]

O.K.  Ken and Deb...Thanks for asking.!    This long...just to warn all you. 
At the moment Old Station is snow-free.  The Rim appears to be getting a light dusting last Monday when I drove home from Burney ( the town, not the Falls), but it was snow free, except maybe in very shaded spots.  Hwy 89 in the vicinity of Bartle Lodge, did get snow, and kept plows busy for a while.  So far, we have received maybe 65% of normal rain/snow fall this winter.  
But, HST, last Easter Eve, before I went to bed, I looked out the window at bare ground, and even a bit of moonlight, and thought that 6:00A.M. Easter services would be cold, but at least the weather looked to be good.  When I woke up at 4:30, to get ready for those services, and looked out the window...all I could see was snow and trees and our two flag poles, with lots more snow falling.   I went out,  armed with two yard sticks taped together, and stuck them into all this stuff til they hit something solid, compensating for the overlap where the measuring sticks were taped together, looked, and said 'holy ____! , 4 feet', and went back to bed.  By afternoon, when it finally stopped, we measured 4 1/2 feet.  That equated to 13/14 ft. up in LVNP.
And in 3 days, down here, it was gone...but not up there, nor anywhere between the southern base of Red Mt. and Ash Camp...not until mid July...and in some spots not then.  So. it's still wait and see...I won't be asking my usual sources until at least the first week in May.
I recognize that I'm not much help at this point, but so far, if nothing changes, you should be able to clear Old Station heading  north quite early, tho I make no guesses about very far north w/o talking to some other people first.  I suggest that you keep asking, and that you log onto http://newweb.wrh.noaa.gov/sto/ , and find 'Local Forecast By "City, St.".  Enter towns as close to the area you're interested in as you can get, for example, Etna, CA, up near the wilderness areas, and tho it sometimes take a while, you'll get a 5 to 7 day forecast, Winter and Severe Weather warnings and watches, as well as a map off to the right side that shows you the town in question, it's lat/long and elevation.  What's so great is that you can move that little red square around, so-o-o, if you check on the town closest to the area of the trail you're concerned about, get the town's vitals, move your curser over to that general trail area, and wiggle it around til you get as close as you can to a known trail elevation, every time you wiggle and click, you get a new map, with new vitals and a new forecast.  I can tell you that at 8100 feet, as close as I could get to the summit in LVNP, there is a 30% chance of snow Sat. night.
The end result is that by checking on a few key townsites as near as possible to the trail say, every 5 to 6 days, while you may not know what the present snowload is, you CAN get an educated guess as to if it's being added to or not.  You'll get both day and night temps, so, maybe get some inkling as to snowmelt as well.
This is something I'll not have time to do as the hiking season grows nearer, nor even now, with much to do before the hoards descend.  You're on your own here.  
But, to give some proof to my idea, I went to Etna, Ca, got the little map, checked it against the Russian and Marble Mt. Wildernesses map I got from REI and found a place there the trail crosses long/lat lines, in this case 41.0N-123.0W., and started clicking on the little map til I found 41.5N-122.9W, as close as I could get, not too far off, and learned that the elevation was 4218 ft., that at that elevation, and that it may rain Saturday and Saturday night, with highs in the 50's and lows from 27 to 34 degrees. Between the rain and the 60 or so degree temp's there could be some snow melt, if there is any snow, which I doubt, except on north facing slopes maybe.  There are no winter weather advisories showing, while there's supposed to be rain, NOAA isn't concerned for your safely.  Oh, and I can move that little map from Old Station to Happy Camp by just clicking on the edge of it in a direction I want to go.  Everything changes with the map.   You probably have more sophisticated ways of finding out the same stuff, but this is the best I can offer off the cuff.
Have fun....Oh and pray for rain/snow....unless you too want to skip over these Wilderness areas, or grope your way thru the smoke.
Georgi