Anderson Ridge

The sun and warm weather made it feel like spring and had us shedding layers at the start of our tour. Snow conditions also felt spring-like, with soft, wet snow (almost corn) on a supportable base on sunny slopes. While these sunny slopes still have less snow than the shaded northerly facing aspects, they still had more than enough snow to travel on as long as we carefully avoided the rocks, bushes, and other things sticking out of the snow. When we moved to E aspects, we found a thin sun crust on the surface that broke apart under our skis. The more northerly aspects held a few inches of soft, cold snow on the surface, with surface hoar in a few sheltered spots. More snow exists on more aspects in this area and many of the southerly aspects even held enough snow to travel on. 

We probed into the snowpack in several places on various aspects and at different elevations. We could feel softer snow at the base of the snowpack on a few of the upper-elevation north-facing slopes, but most spots held a well-consolidated snowpack almost to the ground.