Crater Lake

We went to Crater Lake to see if there was a genuine refreeze and to see if there was good snow to ski on the south faces. During the past two nights, the snow has refrozen, even at lower elevations: the road was hard with some softening snow on top when we began our ascent at 11:00 am. The snow was very tacky all the way up, except on north faces at the very top part of our ascent to the ridge leading down from Red Lake Peak. There surfaces were firm, and ski crampons might have been in order. 

On the other side, the southeast and east facing highway shots, it was a different snow world. On the ridge itself, we saw some graupel. And on the other side, there was 1 cm of melted snow on top of firmer snow, although it wasn't as hard as the firm snow on the north sides. It was not exactly like corn, but it skied like it. It was very good skiing. Some areas had textured surfaces due to wind, but they were soft enough that they did not impact the ski quality.

At Crater Lake, we looked across to the E and SE facing slopes, and since Sunday, I saw two new wet loose slides.

The creek was about the same as on Sunday with lots of open spots but few and disappearing bridges across.

At trailhead, HS was surprisingly still at 90 cm, despite the patchy look to the snow. 

Some light snow fell starting at 11:38 am at 8000 ft.

There was a good refreeze in this area over the past two nights. On Sunday morning, the snow was very soft, very moist, and ski pen was at least 4 cm. On Sunday, the snow was very slow from Crater Lake all the way down to the trailhead. Today, there was a little soft snow on top of hard snow. Most of the tour, back-of-the-pole pen was at most 1 cm. Near Crater Lake at almost 9000 ft, it was zero; it wasn't icy -- the snow was still mostly tacky -- but on polar aspects, there was no soft snow on top of the hard pack. In contrast, on the SE/E facing descent, there was a 1 cm pen of soft snow on top of the hard pack.

HS at trailhead was 90 cm.