Castlecrag carbon copy

We adventured out to Castlecrag again today for another look at winter and found conditions very similar to our previous visit, with some notable differences. First off, we were able to drive to roughly 49.65756, -125.31836. More intrepid travelers may reach as far as 49.66053, -125.32736, where we saw the last set of truck tracks, but it isn't far from where we stopped and there are some slick sections in between. This is rugged logging road travel! Many sections are steep and/or exposed. Drivers should take extreme care and carry a radio tuned to Mosaic 3. As for snow conditions, rainfall switched to snowflakes at about 1300 m and we again found 10-30 cm of moist snow (wet at lower elevations) increasing in depth with elevation. Sliding wasn't quite as slow going as our previous foray but the new snow was definitely wet and heavy. It sat on a burly 60 (!) cm crust and at rare moments we could push a small chunk of storm snow off the crust in a way that felt somewhat like a storm slab. No propagation or shooting cracks though. We only experienced calm winds so reactivity of the new snow might have been greater near ridgetop. Giant pinwheels were in play once again!