Elephant

Traveled into the Elephant Peak area on a day off. Snow surfaces remained hard and frozen with high overcast skies combined with cooling west winds at the highest elevations.

We found consistent snow coverage starting around 4200 feet. Cloudy skies kept temperatures down and surfaces firm. We observed hard supportable snow surfaces with 0 to less than 1 cm ski penetration on top of the pencil to knife hard 10cm thick surface crust. At 6000 to 7000 feet, on a West aspect, a Knife to Ice hard surface rain crust was present. Higher in elevation, the west aspect surfaces were consistently knife hard and it was difficult to tell where the transition occurred between the recent (March 24) rain line versus hard wind scoured surfaces. Surfaces were easily walkable with boot crampons but too hard and firm for ski edges. Observed evidence of recent previous wind drifts and dry snow surfaces on the opposite, East aspect side on the 7900 foot ridgetop. No active snow transport on this day with wind exposed south to west aspects scoured down to hard surfaces. 

Lower down near 6000 feet and below, open slopes exposed to the intermittent sun after 1pm softened the top 1cm snow surface.