Elephant's Hump

Everything has refrozen in the last week. When I was last at Hump on Friday, temperatures were in the mid 50s, boot pen was 17 cm, ski pen was 7 cm, medium to large runnels were everywhere, and the snow was so slow that I had to push myself with poles on the way down. Today, temperatures were in the mid 30s, boot pen was at most 12 cm, ski pen was at most 2 cm, the runnels were smaller and smoothed out, and the snow was fast.

It was remarkable how firm surfaces were. Red Lake had refrozen, and I skated back to the car on the Lake. Graupel appeared at 8100 ft on north aspects and then faceted snow above 8600 ft -- dust on crust. On E, SE, and S aspects, the snow on top was softer and wetter but directly underneath was a very firm surface. As I approached the summit via the E/SE slopes, I decided to put ski crampons on at 8600 ft, when it got a little steeper; at that point, there was no real ski pen and boot pen was at most 5 mm. I noticed that this slope had become smoother from last week's weather events: warmth, rainstorm, snow/graupel storm, and wind. The large runnels were gone and only smaller ones remained.

When I swung over to the north aspects on the last part of my skin up, I noticed soft dry snow -- facets of 2-3 mm in size -- on top of very firm snow with a 2 cm ski pen and 12 cm boot pen. I decided to ski down the north aspects, but I should have stuck to my original plan of skiing down the E/SE aspects. On the north aspects, the snow on top was soft and dry, but it lay on top of small runnels, sun cups, wind lips, needle meltouts. All of these features had frozen solid. It was a very chattery descent -- all the way down to the Lake. 

The snow was firm at all elevations in the area and on all the aspects I observed.