Quick report
Skiing down from 10,700 ft. at the warmest part of the day was a mixed bag. It was rough and loud down to 9700 ft., where I skied softening almost-corn after making sure my teeth still had all their fillings.
- No signs of instability, even ski cutting some steep solar slopes with wet snow at lower elevations in the afternoon.
- Surface melt-freeze crusts are thick and hard and hardly thawed today. Some patches of dry snow above about 10,000 ft. were also sitting atop melt-freeze crusts.
- Really cold northeast winds at ridgetops kept things cool - including me.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 20s and 30s
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- NA
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Beautiful day! Cold north winds at ridgetops. Isolated areas of blowing snow on the Mammoth Crest in the morning.
Snowpack
There was minimal thawing of thick, Knife-hard melt-freeze crusts today. Some softening on solar aspects midday.
- I found hard melt-freeze crusts on all aspects and elevations up to 10,700 ft.
- Coverage on west and southwest aspects is thinning and dwindling. I had to walk on dirt to connect some patches.
- Above 9800 ft. I found patches of dry graupel atop the melt-freeze crust. These patches were 2-4 inches deep and had thin, breakable 1-Finger melt-freeze crusts on top.