Auriol peak

Walked for the first 1.5 km of the Auriol trail (no snow) then skied to the loop jct. Travel was difficult over a hard crust interspersed with old post holing from X-skiers. Continued towards Auriol peak and stayed on a bench above the drainage on the W side of the rock glacier. Travel was great on a hard frozen crust. Temperature stayed cool as the wind picked up as soon as we got in the alpine. It kept building up with elevation and reached gale force once on the snowfield, col & summit. The access to the snowfield requires careful route selection and the proper snow condition & temparature all of which were met today. A 100m bootpack with take you from the Auriol drainage to the Snowfield. Any recent snow left was being transported\sublimated by the wind. We were getting tossed around with our skis on our packs and had to hunker down every couple minutes even while skiing. We bootpacked up from the col to the summit of Auriol peak and descended into the Martha Black drainage over a hard crust and old avalanche debris. The snow lower down was variable\crusty\choppy. We stayed on the crest of the rock glacier and skied down to 1240m to the drainage link-up back around Martha Black E3. Snow was crusty although a bit softer at that elevation on the traverse back to the Auriol trail. Ski out was challenging on the trail with variable snow conditions and some isothermic patches around trees. More and more sections of the trail are snow free even higher up. We had to take the skis off quite often.