Rubicon Peak

We toured the N and E slopes of Rubicon Peak this morning. A decent snow surface refreeze occurred in this area last night, including under areas of thick forest canopy. As we ascended above about 8,200' on N aspects, we encountered about 1 cm of recent new snow from Saturday night that had yet to assimilated with the surface melt-freeze layer. On E aspects, this recent new snow had assimilated with the surface melt layer yesterday. Descending E aspect terrain from 8,900' at 11:20 am, about two inches of surface wet snow existed and was prime for shallow wet loose avalanches in places with sufficient slope angle. As we continued to descend, surface wet snow became deeper but remained ski supportable. Some areas where the snow surface has no longer ski supportable were encountered on E aspect terrain around 7,500'. We used N and NW aspect terrain for the remainder of our exit which was still ski supportable.

Looking out into Desolation wilderness, we noted a couple areas of glide cracks on E aspect terrain on the lower flanks of Crag Peak and in unnamed terrain to the NW of Crag Peak. We also saw some small wet loose avalanches that had occurred on ENE aspect terrain of Dick's Peak.