Arkose Ridge

Took advantage of the longer days, settled weather, stable conditions, and the busy weekend to get away from the crowds and do a nice ridge walk. We ascended Stairstep and followed it all the way up to Arkose Ridge and around to Lone Tree Gulch. For the most part travel was smooth and firm, but we did encounter some challenging skinning on solar aspects where new snow was somewhat slick on old sun crusts. Although we stuck to the ridge for the most part and didn't really dip our toes into any avalanche terrain until we got to Lone Tree, we didn't observe much instability outside of some isolated sluffing and wind effected pockets (see snowpack notes). In areas protected from the wind, the sun felt much stronger but for the most part a light SE breeze helped keep us and the snow surface cool. 

Snow from this week fell on a variety of surfaces including firm wind board, sun and wind crusts, and small grain facets. For the most part the recent snow seems well bonded to the old snow surface, and instabilities seem mostly isolated to steep or solar slopes. On one sunny aspect where the old surface was a sun crust, skinning was slippery and we were able to initiate a small sluff that entrained snow below it as it ran down the slope. Some light wind effect was evident along the ridge and mid-slope at upper elevations. Although we experienced no cracking or collapsing on these wind effected features, we did observe one old naturally triggered wind slab and another smaller skier triggered persistent slab on a steep shady aspect in Lone Tree Gulch.