Elephant's Back

We toured to the peak of Elephant's Back with an idea to ski down the SE face and the NE face, if the conditions warranted. We had planned to skin up the west side of the Back, but warm temperatures this past week has resulted in significant melt-out on this face. We ended up skinning halfway up -- with ski crampons despite it being midday -- and booting up the other half. The SE face descending at 12:30 pm was excellent with soft snow, not corn, of 4-6 cm on top of a very firm supportable crust. Towards the top, we had to hike around some melted-out rocky areas. Even at the very bottom, the ski penetration never exceeded 6 cm. We then skinned back up towards the NE Bowl, but the snow there was either concrete hard, or at best, breakable crust. It was clear that parts of the NE bowl never softened up, despite the very warm temperatures. As always at Elephant's Back, there was plenty of evidence of previous SW winds.

There was a refreeze last night at these elevations: between 8200 and 9500 feet. During our tour, the contrast among aspects was large. On E, S, and W aspects, we experienced soft snow between 4-6 cm. On the entire 1300 ft descent starting at 12:30 pm, there were no notable  instabilities on the SE slope; on slopes greater than 40 degrees, we did release some very small wet loose chunks, but they only slid a few feet down. We did see large runnels, sun cups, and surface hoar breaking down under the sun. On N and NE aspects, there was only hard snow and some breakable crust on slopes that saw a little bit of sun.