Quick report
It was a sunny and warm spring day on the mountain. As expected snow surfaces for the most part, excluding dry snow hideouts on steep shaded northerlies in the morning all held mostly firm with some breakable crusts to travel. Firm surfaces quickly softened as temperatures warmed. Firm surfaces made for both fun and at times challenging travel on steeper slopes. Easier travel on sun softened slopes plus better skiing. Small wet avalanches that had likely occured over the past 3 days within the most recent snow were observed, and large wet avalanches from the late March atmospheric river are still visible. I did not observe any new avalanches that I could say were from today. While maybe there isn't much soft snow to work with for actual wet loose avalanches, at least at mid elevations, I did note a number of open glide cracks, cornices and snow patches clinging to rocks throughout the Backcountry that could be trouble spots with above freezing temperatures this weekend. Some roller balls triggered once crusts softened. Glide cracks are open in the usual areas.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 46
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Sunny with a few wisps of high clouds. Great visibility. Temperatures warmed quickly with minimal wind.
Snowpack
Very little recent snow at 4000-4500' maybe 2 inches increases to an average of 6 inches( a few isolated areas had drifted to 1'). The newest snow had already developed several thinner melt freeze crusts, this all over the late March AR crust which averaged 6-8 cm thick with large grain melt forms below this that we're moist and P to 1 F hardness. Crusts where boot, skin and snowshoe supportable in the morning then softened becoming less so portable to boot, with some occasional post holes where the foundation AR crust was a bit thinner.