Quick report
Went looking for decent, safe skiing today and had a misguided notion to pick a steep solar slope. Went to the Seneca Chutes on Angora, and with a late start (9:15) I found a crust on the flats that was surprisingly supportable to skis, even though it was only a couple centimeters thick. This has already broken down steeper, sunny slopes by 9:45 am. I got the apron of the lookers right chute, which faces SE around 10:10, and went to switch to booting. I immediately found unsupportable conditions, with boot penetration between knee and mid thigh, and wet snow extending over a foot below the surface. While transitioning, multiple large rollerballs originated in the rocks, and some grew quite large in size, but none entrained much additional snow, and no actual wet loose activity was observed. I stayed away from steep polars, and only crossed a few, small northerly test slopes. These still held cold storm snow, but this was becoming quite a bit more dense by mid morning. I observed no signs of instability during my limited time on small polar slopes. At the lower elevations today, I didn’t experience much wind at all, or see any wind transport occurring along the Echo/Angora Ridge. After booting for about 100 feet, I pulled the plug due to both stability and quality concerns. The descent from there was awful, and I went cross country skiing instead, which was a much better choice, at least where snowmobiles had been previously. My car thermometer read 54 F in town at 1:30 pm.