Early Season

As other reports in the area indicated on previous days, there was very little snow coverage below 1500m today. We hiked up to about 1450m before we decided to put skins on. Beyond that point there were many creek crossings as we made our way through the meadows. Snow coverage started to improve as we ascended towards the ridge SE of Brandywine Mtn. Larger rocks were easy to identify as lumps in the snow, so they were easy to avoid. We ended up doing a little couloir that we spotted (in the pics, located approx. the marker of this report). We decided to proceed as there are currently no problem layers in the snowpack. We managed to ski and dodge the rocks all the way down to the creek and continued to gamble on the skin track a decent ways out with no damage to gear. Overall decent conditions for early November.