Castle Peak

Within 5 minutes of leaving the car, we had taken off our jackets and were still hot skinning uphill in tee-shirts. Clear skies last night produced a better refreeze than yesterday, but the sun and warm temperatures melted through the refrozen surface on E-SE-S-SW aspects before 10 am. Whenever we stepped off our skis on these aspects, we sank to the top of our boots into wet snow. We found some sunny SE-facing test slopes above Castle Pass. Ski kicks at the top of these test slopes caused roller balls, 4-5 ft diameter pinwheels, and small sluffs of loose, wet snow in the morning. By noon, ski-width sluffs of loose, wet snow started happening.

We moved across the ridge to the N and NW aspects to see what kind of refreeze had happened on those aspects. The crust on those aspects remained ski-supportable and firm until we departed the area at noon.

Clearly, enough wet snow existed for loose wet avalanches, so we stuck to lower-angle slopes with soft, wet snow on them for our exit. 

Today, we saw large pinwheels, rollerballs, and small sluffs of loose, wet snow on sunny E-SE-S-SW aspects.