Quick report
We had a beautiful overnight on Ruby Mountain. We switched to skinning at about 3,200 vertical feet and were able to skin continuously to the Summit, although the snowpack download is definitely pretty thin. In the morning there was definitely a bit of crust in spots below tree line, with mush most other places (2-4 inch ski penetration ). Up higher, above 5,500 ft, we were a little bit surprised to find pockets of dry snow on shaded aspects, with slush and sun crust in other places. Although there were plenty of roller balls and small loose wet slides, we were a little bit surprised to not see much in the way of recent loose wet activity and we saw no signs of instability. At about 6:00 p.m. on the 18th however, we did see a fairly large cornice fall which ran a decent ways (4-500 vertical feet) although did not seem to entrain too much additional snow. The cornice in question was 3 or 400 vertical feet below the summit on the north side of the West ridge.