Heart Lake

The snowpack at Castle Lake is thin - about two feet near the lake shore. Shallowly buried and visible earthly obstacles are abundant. On solar aspects, snow surfaces became wet by mid-afternoon. On shady aspects, breakable crusts predominate. Generally stable conditions exist apart from wet, surface instabilities on the warmest slopes below treeline. 

The upper snowpack (snow since early January) was wet or moist on all observed aspects, with no obvious faceting even on northerlies. On a north aspect at 6,100 feet, about 15 inches of early-January snow sat atop 26 inches of early-season snow (see annotated photo). The upper snowpack was moist and generally right-side-up with multiple melt-freeze crusts, including the breakable crust at the surface; ECTX at this location.  On our egress, snow surfaces were losing cohesion on a west aspect at 5,600 feet by 3pm, with numerous skier-initiated rollerballs and a large pinwheel. A stout crust about 10 inches below the snow surface limited the amount of snow available for entrainment. I suspect a steeper slope and more free water in the upper snowpack would have been required for wet loose activity.