Quick report
Toured the south side of sahale mountain via cascade pass. Clouds in the early morning cleared quickly to a beautiful sunny day. Wind affect was observed on all surfaces traveled on throughout the day, ranging from stiffened powder to wind board to extremely firm surfaces stripped down to the January dry spell layer. Recent snow amounts were difficult to assess due to the extreme amount of wind transport. We observed minimal recent avalanche activity on north/shaded aspects between Johannesburg mountain and pelton peak- nothing more than what appeared to a thin windslab on a crossloaded feature near mixup peak. On south/sunny aspects, several larger crowns were visible near mount torment, mount forbidden (pictured), and mount buckner (pictured). Sunny aspects warmed considerably during the day, but we only observed a couple of small rollerballs by 1:30PM when we dropped back into the shade. We dug a quick pit just above Sahale glacier camp to assess the bond of the new snowpack and look for weak layers. S facing slope, 7800', around 25-29 degrees. We performed an ECT, finding no results in 30 taps. After the ECT, I jammed my shovel behind the column and yanked a few times. On the third pull with quite a bit of effort, a cohesive slab 65cm deep cleanly fractured just a bit above a thick crust (8cm). The slab was mostly made up of finger hardness snow and was cohesive. Ski quality was variable, but better than expected. Quite a bit of soft and smooth windboard/windbuff.