Eastern sierra in late May

[cdevine]

For snow, look at the caltopo Daily satellites" "Daily low-res" view. Looks like great corn snow skiing for miles.

SSSDave,

I went to CAL TOPO but noticed the weekly high resolution link is "GREY OUT" on option bar. Do you need a membership now? Just wanted to check on some snow conditions. Appreciate any feedback you might have.

[TurboHike]

For snow, look at the caltopo Daily satellites" "Daily low-res" view. Looks like great corn snow skiing for miles.

SSSDave,

I went to CAL TOPO but noticed the weekly high resolution link is "GREY OUT" on option bar. Do you need a membership now? Just wanted to check on some snow conditions. Appreciate any feedback you might have.

cdevine,

I am somewhat familiar with your question so I thought I would chime in here. The weekly HiRes used to be a free feature in Caltopo, but they recently changed it to pay only. This is why it's greyed out. The data for the HiRes is from the Sentinel Hub. CalTopo was paying for the data and obviously wants to recoup some of that cost.

If you want to see the HiRes image for free, you can go to the Sentinel Hub Playground, which is the free version of Sentinel Hub. You will need to locate the area of interest, and make sure you choose the correct date. Sometimes choosing a slightly prior date with less cloud cover is better. The main drawback is that you cannot overlay the Caltopo maps onto the Sentinel Hub Playground HiRes view. For this you will need to subscribe to Caltopo.

good luck.

[cdevine]

Thanks so much! I'm wondering if I just fork out the $20 bucks for membership. Its probably worth it.

[chulavista]

Inyo said they won't give out wilderness permits in May.

[TahoeJeff]

I paid the $50 to get CT Pro. I don't think the $20 upgrade includes the satellite imagery.
The layer is labeled "Weekly High-Res", but it seems to be updated every 3-4 days.
It has been extremely helpful to see which lakes are iced out for fishing!

[dougieb]

I have the same Caltopo subscription to get the snow data and it is great. Sometimes I want to make sure there's no snow and other times I'm hoping for as much as possible. All depends on the activity!

Speaking of Sierra in May, I went to cottonwood pass and miter basin around May 25 of 2015 and didn't even put my feet in snow. Then... we went to bed in Miter Basin and woke up in the middle of the night with the tent pressing on my face. We were deep into a snow storm and woke up with 6-10 inches on the ground. I was terrified. What if we never make it out!? But then the morning was incredibly gorgeous and sunny and the snow all melted by the evening. It was one of my most memorable trips but we got lucky. I don't even think I checked the weather in advance. I was a real dummy for that one.

We ran into a herd of Big Horn sheep and I stood less than 20 feet from at least 15-20 of them. I looked at my friend from Germany who had never been in the Sierra and said, soak this up, most people will never experience this in their lifetime.

[Solace-seeker]

Thank you Bobby49