East Peak and Cement Basin

Travel down low is certainly slow going and can be challenging, particularly under tree cover. The approach to Bullion/East Peak from Crystal was fairly manageable, but slick. Luckily, besides the one corner, it's low-angle enough that we didn't use ski crampons. Anywhere it went fully under tree cover was sheer ice. As we ascended East Peak, we found it was easier off the established skin track since we could punch through the surface crust. The first few switchbacks in the trees were brutal. Once on the ridge, we made 3 different laps into Cement on different aspects and sub-zones and they all skied a little differently. We found wind-press, recycled powder, "corn", slick crusts, and refrozen avalanche debris and tracks. We had fun on 2 out of the 3 runs. We were able to ski a sun-exposed slope late morning before the high clouds came in and it was just soft enough to be fully enjoyable. The ski down it was manageable, but not particularly good. Again, a mix of firm and breakable crusts The summer trail had softened by the time we skied out, but that one corner was still an ice sheet. 

No new signs of instability were present.

No real surprise - the snow surface is variable.

Down low, the approach was mostly firm with ice patches. Lots of SH in shaded, protected areas. Approaching mid-elevations and more open slopes, we found mostly breakable crust, firm crust, and isolated pockets of soft snow. Up high, we sampled both sun-exposed and shaded slopes and surprisingly found fun turns on both of them. We also found some bad turns due to frozen tracks, avalanche debris, breakable crust, and wind-press.

Shaded slopes are faceting out. Where I dug in Cement Basin, there's almost a foot of weak snow, including the 1/10 crust.  ECTN10 just above the 1/10 crust. On sun-exposed slopes, there are more crusts with weak snow interspersed.