Red Lake Peak

We toured from the Meiss Meadow Trailhead up south and southeast aspects toward Red Lake Peak. Two ribbons of mostly smooth snow allowed travel to the ridge but these are melting out fast. Temperatures felt cooler than the previous morning, though still warm enough to travel in a sun hoody. A consistent west wind along the upper ridge helped keep both us and the snow surface cool.

The low snow coverage and melting snowpack has created funky snow features and made travel somewhat complex. Puddles were present around the edges of the snow even at 9600 ft. We observed and heard running water beneath the snowpack, with open creek holes and small waterfalls as high as 9000ft. Glide crack features near these gullys where there was running water created hazards on our descent. The snow was sparse in areas as willows, sage, and rocks melt through and although passable on the skin up, felt impassable on the way down without having to take our skies off. We ended up walking across some exposed ground to a different snow ribbon that provides a more open and fun ski.

Snow surfaces were mostly smooth on these southerly aspects with a 2 inch melt. Mid slope cornice features held very defined runnels from the rain event a few weeks ago. We observerd small roller balls coming off of our ski tracks as we descended and more snow entrainment than yesterday, especially lower in the terrain where there was no wind to cool the snow down. 

A northwest aspect on the backside of the ridge toward Meiss remained mostly firm, with only a slight amount of surface melt and still had quite a bit of texture also from the rain event. 

We dug into the snowpack at 9000 feet and found 2 inches of surface melt over a 10 inch supportable crust with wet snow below that to the ground. The total snowpack height was 45 cm.