Red Lake Peak

Climbed Red Lake Peak today to look at wind affected snow and try to find the rain/snow line from Monday. There was a thin breakable crust from ~ 7400 ft along Hwy 88 until around 8300'. I was looking for evidence of avalanche activity during Saturday's storm and was only able to see a few small debris piles below cliffs and few cornice  breaks on the upper south and south east facing terrain. There were a few recennt small loose wet slide on steep sunny slopes at lower elevations.

We dug a pit on a NW aspect at 8600' above Crater Lake. We got several ECTN results but saw no propagation even when we continued loading past the official end of the tests. The facets at the ground appeared to be rounding and were not loose and sugary. The near surface facets (now buried mid pack) were not reactive to our tests in this location. 

The evidence of previous and current winds were noticeable on the ridge to the summit. Widespread sastrugi, multiple exposed old crusts, and a few eroded vertical tubes of ice that appeared to be old percolation tubes from water in the snow were present. Several windswept ridges were bare of snow. What snow hadn't been eroded was quite firm at the upper elevations. 

Skiing north facing terrain off the highest point of Red Lake Peak the snow was firm and ski edges were only penetrating about a centimeter in the softest spots.