Feels like end of May

Today was overcast, cold and windy in the am and sunny and warmer in the pm. The travel felt like a typical alpine-start-end-of-may-melt-freeze-cycle but with no melt throughout the day—making it not so fast for travel in most places while crossing wind hammered snow. Just out of the skintrack, we could easily break up the surface snow into hard slabs—thin 4cm ones in most places, but also many bigger pockets of 18cm deep near ridges. Snow transport by strong winds seemed significant higher up in the alpine—we could see wind transport all the way from the top of the Howson Range to Kenney and beyond, to Superbowl. Ski crampons might be useful if skinning up exposed alpine sections. The skiing was much better than the uphill, with dust on crust on a really enjoyable alpine East Face. We stayed away from lower elevations and trees, mainly due to debris found around them (from the warm up) and to the thin-uninspiring snowpack. Early season hazards are back, including lots of avalanche debris and open creeks.