Top hat pow

Great day up on Top Hat traverse. BTL remains fairly crusty and icy on the skin track. It was almost better to walk some sections. At higher elvation things begin to soften though melt freeze crusts still exist on steeper solar aspects. Made for relatively easy skinning up to the top hat col. Noticed a few older larger avalanches from before previous storm. More recent ones since the last storm seem to be mostly point releases off the rocks on steep solar alpine features. They go 10-50m mostly arresting in the track though some make it to the top of the runout. Only surface snow, No signs of stepping down. All size 1 within the last 72 hours. The skiing on the north side of the col was great fresh turns most of the way down. Melt freeze layer reappears around TL leading slightly worse but still decent skiing. Noticed no signs of instability. The creek ski out was fun and took us all the way back to emerald lake before we had to put skins back on. +2 in the parking lot when we got down around 2pm with good solar input. With some warmer than seasonal temps we are glad we started a bit early.