Mt. Gould E Face, Independence Couloir

Quick report

We travelled from Onion Valley to 12.8k ft on the E face of Mt. Gould. It was 40F when we got on snow at around 0800 at 10.1k ft. The refreeze overnight was solid. We reached 11.6k ft at 0930 am and began ascending the E face. The surface was mostly soft, textured coral reef (penitentes, Clancy?), with some transitioning wind board on more polar aspects. We began our descent from 12.8k ft at 1115. I tried to push the surface snow on a steep (~40deg?) slope where I dropped in, and a ski width’s worth of snow slid a short ways, but didn’t trigger a slide that entrained any meaningful amount of snow. We enjoyed fun turns down to Golden Trout Lake at 11.3k ft. At 1145, we started up the E face again to try to ski the N face of Gould. Ski pen was still no more than 5-10cm. The snow was soft and wet on the surface, with visible water droplets between grains. Every once in a while you’d push the surface snow off and start sliding down below the skin track we’d set earlier. When we got to a steeper, rockier area on the shoulder making our way to the N face at 12.7k ft, we found boot top penetration. Winds were light to moderate, downslope. The N face was rocky, faceting wind board, so we opted to ski the E face again, dropping in just after 1300. I fell into a hole of unsupportable snow near the base of some rocks. But other than that, ski quality remained high, though the wet penitentes were a little heavy to push around. The hot wind board was great skiing. Skiing back to our shoes felt like the most treacherous part of the day, with sticky, unsupportable snow and many holes to fall into next to rocks and logs looking.

Avalanche

Size

D2

Type

WL

Aspect

NE

Elevation

10500 ft

On the drive down the road at the end of our day, we saw a fresh looking wet loose slide in Independence Couloir. Best guess is that it started high up in one of the E facing chutes that lead into it.