Quick report
Walked up San Joaquin ridge to get the legs loose, see how a week of high pressure has impacted the Deadman's/Office zone since last weekend, and try to find some near surface facets to frolic around in. It was quite breezy at Main Lodge around 630am, but the wind cut down considerably for the balance of the tour. Unsurprisingly, solar aspects have lost a lot of snow and are now heavily sun affected. A variety of surface conditions were found during my tour, ranging from facets on true polar aspects to supportable, kind-of-supportable, and unsupportable sun crusts on pretty much all other aspects. I had initially intended to ski a lap at the Office based on last weekend's surprisingly good snow, but coverage had come way down and it didn't look particularly appealing. So, I opted to get a few turns in on the gentle NE terrain directly above Deadman's and enjoyed a mix of faceted snow, sun affected snow, and refrozen snowmobile tracks. The crux of the day was definitely split skiing back down to Minaret summit... No signs of instability during tour. Mostly an on-snow affair, though some dry land skiing was necessary in a few spots.