Snow and data scientist here! This is a great question with lots of fun data available for answers. The data from postholer that others have linked is one great tool, but it comes from model outputs, which can have some issues at the highest elevations that we care the most about! Here’s some data from real observations that are also worth considering:
First things first, it’s helpful to get a sense of how big the snowpack is this year for an area of interest, GNP in your case. We can look at this map of real time, on-the-ground snowpack measurements from the SNOTEL (snow telemetry) network, and see that in general, the GNP region is sitting at about 85-100% of average for this date. Checking the Flat Top Mtn sensor (nicely representative of the area), we see that this year’s snowpack is looking similar to the 2019 and 2016 snowpacks.
The CDT Hiker Survey for 2019 suggests that for a snowpack like this, SOBO hikers were happiest with start dates around 6/15-6/13. But in 2021 and 2022, the snowpack was closer to average, and people preferred later start dates closer to 6/25. This is worth considering as a high-end estimate, in case the snow melts slower than usual, or they have some big late season storms.
Rud Platt also has a great tool that lets you access historical weekly snow coverage data for free in a map format, so you get a sense of the location and size of lingering snow fields. Since this year’s snow is probably going to be somewhere between 2019 and 2021, we can go back and look at snow coverage for June 2019 and June 2021 to get an idea of how this year’s June snow coverage might look. If things stay drier, starting around mid-June seems like a safe enough bet. But if those values from the snotel sensors start ticking up above 95-105%, you’ll probably be happier starting around 6/20-6/25.
On spam. I’ve deleted thousands of spam posts. Luckily the filters have caught them all.
Over 85% of the spam gets posted to “Into Big Bear” :: “Cuben Fiber Tent” and one of my gear posts. I’m not sure what makes those posts so attractive to spam bots.