EISPIRATEN

Although it was raining in Claremont I still just wanted to get out of the house so I took a short walk up Icehouse Canyon. There was some rock fall along the road and it was still raining when I got to the parking area about 9:45. I figured I had a rain jacket and wore some water-repellant pants so why not.... It turned into hail just after the Chapman trail junction and I could hear the wind increasing as I went further up the canyon. Took a break behind a tree at the Cucamonga Wilderness boundary to eat a few jelly beans, then went up further. More hail and some snow, still plenty of rain too making for an interesting walk through the slushy footprints of hikers on their way back down. I stopped at the group of trees just past the two-mile marker and with frozen hands decided to head back down. I was changing my gloves from the light liners to heavier insulated and couldn't grip them well enough to pull on so I had to use my teeth. The wind was roaring through the trees at that point and my thermometer said about 32 degrees, so a burger and Sierra Nevada at the Lodge sounded great. It was 36 degrees when I reached the parking lot.
There were about 15 cars parked at the trailhead and I saw about that many people, including a large group of eight.
What is the difference between hail, freezing rain, sleet, graupel and snow?

A few pictures from the final days of winter.....

Rained steadily up to this point but I could now see what looked like dippin' dots sticking to the ground.



Crossing back over the stream towards Cucamonga Wilderness.



Wilderness. I forgot to stop in the village to get my permit. I've only been asked once, about 20 years ago.



My pack when I stopped to take a break. Was going to cook up some hot tea but my hands were too cold and wet.



Looking up canyon while on my way back.



Down canyon - plenty of white stuff coming down. I was getting pelted pretty hard as I walked back.

Awesome trip report. Love the pictures.

JeffH wrote: ↑What is the difference between hail, freezing rain, sleet, graupel and snow?

Thanks for posting the report and pictures.

Here are the official definitions of your terms.

Hail
Showery precipitation in the form of irregular pellets or balls of ice more than 5 mm in diameter, falling from a cumulonimbus cloud.

Freezing Rain
Rain that falls as a liquid but freezes into glaze upon contact with the ground.

Sleet
(PL) - Sleet is defined as pellets of ice composed of frozen or mostly frozen raindrops or refrozen partially melted snowflakes. These pellets of ice usually bounce after hitting the ground or other hard surfaces. Heavy sleet is a relatively rare event defined as an accumulation of ice pellets covering the ground to a depth of ½" or more.

Graupel
Same as snow pellets or small hail.

Snow
Precipitation in the form of ice crystals, mainly of intricately branched, hexagonal form and often agglomerated into snowflakes, formed directly from the freezing [deposition] of the water vapor in the air.

Thanks for the definitions, must have been graupel or sleet since they were not bigger than 5mm. Whatever it was, it really stung my face and I had to walk some sections with my arm blocking the wind. Didn't help when I walked into a tree limb. Doh!