Silver Peak

Warm, sunny weather returned to the region today and quickly melted through whatever refreeze occurred last night. We started breaking through the soft refreeze crust by 9:30 at the lower elevations. When we stopped to dig into the snow, we found about an inch of new snow on top of a soft refreeze crust that was 1 to 2 inches thick. Below this crust, a deep layer of old wet snow existed. This snowpack structure existed to the top of Silver Peak. The crust was melting fast on the sunny slopes and stayed firm longer on the shady N-facing aspects. The E-SE-S aspects above 8000 ft remained barely ski-supportable until about 11 am. Once we dropped below 7800 ft, we began punching through the crust into old wet snow around 11:15 am. Ski cuts on steep E-facing test slopes also triggered small wet snow sluffs around that time.