Quick report
We did a short tour up San Joaquin Ridge today, topping out about 9500’. Snow cover was pretty continuous but varied widely in depth. Some windward sides of the ridge were completely scoured. Otherwise, the ridgeline and leeward slopes provided good cover and decent, crusty travel. A surface crust was present pretty much everywhere between 9000-9500’. In the trees it was mostly breakable and variable, in some spots melted and moist. Once we left the trees, the crust near ridgeline was hard and supportable. I suspect the presence of wind and lack of tree cover played a part in the stronger refreeze found here. Snow below the crust was moist everywhere we looked. On a shallow-angle SE slope (9500’), we dug a pit and found moist snow below the surface crust all the way to the ground. The slope had variable snow heights 60-105cm and was wind loaded previously. Layers were generally firm-hard with a few melt-freeze crusts mixed in. Large 3mm rounding facets at the ground were moist but maintained a little bounce on the crystal card. It was interesting to see basal facets on this aspect - I suspect the wind loading of the terrain helped maintain early snow cover here. The skies started partly cloudy, then mid-level stratus clouds continued to build during the day. Winds were gusting strong out of the W-SW. Blowing snow was visible from the highest peaks, showing there is still some soft snow at upper elevations available for transport. Not so much from the lower elevations of San Joaquin Ridge where melt-freeze this week pretty well locked up the surface.