Quick report
A gorgeous day in the mountains... especially if you could tune out how warm and manky and low tide it is out there. Chose a relatively simple objective for the day, knowing it was going to hit maybe-historic highs, and had been quite warm overnight. We skinned the road and along the tracks on (just enough) snow. Booted through down-tree land for 400' above the tracks, and until close to 6k(!), the snow on that south aspect was teetering towards isothermic, if not full-blown in places. Easy travel from there to the top. The snow up high (6k+) was capped with a very thin crust, sitting on top of 3-8 inches of soft snow which was sitting on a stouter, supportable layer. The run down the east path was "punchy pow" up high and corn-like at the bottom, which quickly turned to mank for the way out. Embracing the hilarity of the travel definitely made the going more bearable. We hit the Fielding Trail in a giant cluster of blow down... but someone was recently hard at work on the trail, and for that we were super grateful. All in all it was worth it, and the coverage above 6k is still just fine, for now. Certainly alarming to see how dry and brown it is down low, knowing there's still not much snow on the horizon. My day in the Whitefish Range yesterday certainly highlighted how favored the WF Range was in this last storm, compared to our beloved Middle Fork. Stay safe out there everyone :)