Old Ski Bowl

Snowpack was thin at Bunny Flat, <1'. Everitt still has a consistent coating of at least several inches to maybe 1' of snowmobile-compacted snow or ice starting from the Bunny Flat parking lot, plenty for skinning up and skiing back down, though I could imagine some areas in the sun could melt out over the next week. Still a pretty thin snowpack in the lower Old Ski Bowl, maybe 1'-2', sometimes more in gullies/drifts. East aspects seemed to be better drifted in. Stringing together continuous snow without too many rocks sticking out (or just below the surface) took a bit of routefinding and sticking to east aspects and gullies, but wasn't too difficult. The west side of the lower Old Ski Bowl looked like it had more exposed rocks than the east side. On my way up around 1:30pm below 8500' the snow on solar aspects (basically everywhere) was transitional with a layer of almost-corn forming on top with wet thick snow underneath. Ski penetration: 1", boot penetration: 12". Coverage was a bit more consistent above 8500', but still plenty of exposed boulders. Around this time/altitude the snow surface was forming a breakable crust, I think due to a combination of incoming high clouds reducing heating, a bit of a breeze (gusting to maybe 20 mph, enough to see some minor wind transport), and increasing altitude. I climbed to a high point of 9800' below the chute up to Shastarama Point and transitioned for descent just after 3pm. Temperature was in the mid 30s. On the descent I found that all solar aspects all the way back down to Everitt Meml at 7800' had refrozen into a truly unpleasant (and for me, borderline unskiable) breakable crust. By following two skiers descending from Shastarama Point I found a short section of west aspect on Sargents Ridge with some reasonably nice windpacked powder. Other than this the rest of the descent had me wishing I could climb both ways. By the time I got back down to Everitt Meml around 340pm the snowmobile tracks had also refrozen, making for a relatively fast if chattery descent back to Bunny Flat. A few wet-loose point release/natural roller balls had released from around exposed rock on solar aspects on the lower part of Sargents Ridge.

Old Ski Bowl

Quick report

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