Blue Lakes/Indian Valley

We rode from Blue Lakes parking lot to Indian Valley, and bounced on and off the road to check on surface conditions and look for signs of recent instabilities. The surrounding peaks and hillsides all shared the same shimmer, either from the previous rain crust, or from the recent warming over the last couple of days. By early afternoon surface conditions were wet and provided a boot pen just about to the top of the foot, and better riding conditions than expected. Once in the Indian Valley area we stopped to dig a pit at 8000' on a NE aspect. We looked at the top 50cms of snow - the top 4-6" was wet, below that the snow was moist and compressible. There were crusts within the top 50cm that may have previously had thin faceted layers adjacent to them, but today they didn't present a concern.