Went into the Rockies today to look around. Access is challenging with all that pesky dirt. Skiing was better than expected but far from great. Lots of variety of snow surfaces. Mostly crusty. Some spots have some snow on top and others are near impenetrable. Solar aspects were the worst. We saw massive hoar frost on our skis while skinning but by and large it wasn’t visible otherwise - mostly laying down. High and north facing seemed it might offer some nice turns but when we got into that zone we were engulfed in thick cloud and could barely see our boots. Skiing down blind and trying to survive instead of enjoying what might have been the best turns of the day.
We saw many old wet avalanches around size 1.5 that are now rock solid. Entire slopes are tracked with pinwheels from when it was warm and are now ice.