Quick report
Well, it was a nice day for a walk, that's for sure. Bright sunshine gave us the motivation needed to search around and see if we could find some suitable skiing terrain. After skiddering down a refrozen ski-supportable crust to Crystal Lakes, and trying our luck at the breakable crust in the shade, we made the decision to focus on sun-exposed slopes. So we made our way to the saddle with Morse Creek and dropped the sunny side toward the lake. Not bad.. getting better as the sun did its work. There are avalanche crowns and debris all over these basins, some old, some recent. Our ascent to Sourdough Gap was again on the shady and breakable crust filled side, which didn't give us a lot of anticipation for the journey home. By the time we dropped toward Sheep Lake, slopes were ready and we have very pleasant skiing in the sun! No big signs of instability, but we did kick a few rollerballs and pinwheels down. I was barely able to push moist snow on a steep wind-roll. The crew hung in the sun while I dug down to the Solstice Crust before we made the journey back to Crystal. Much more difficult skiing on the way back as we worked the northerlies, but overall not terrible until we got to the FFF area, where the crust became no joke and we bailed to a more skier compacted descent.
There's surface hoar on most aspects up to ridgecrest, but it was getting laid over in the sun. Dry snow still exists under the crust on northerlies, in my pit on a S aspect, it was moist'ish down to the 1/2 interface.
Weather
A few high clouds here and there, particularly in the morning. Other than that, full sunshine!
Snowpack
The snowpack continues to be fairly rightside-up and well-settled. A number of melt-freeze crusts exist in the top foot of the snowpack, going back to the 1/2 interface. The number and thickness of these crusts varies by aspect and to a degree elevation.
On higher-elevation northerlies, a thin zipper crust exists on the surface. As we descended, we found a much more stout, breakable crust on these aspects. On slopes that see direct sunshine, such as southerlies, a firm crust existed in the morning before the surface softened throughout the day.
We did get a failure in compression tests at the 1/2 interface, but no propagation.
The Solstice Crust was down roughly 4.5 feet (135cm).
Avalanche
There were avalanche crowns everywhere from last week's cycle. We also observed rollerballs and wet loose debris on numerous sun-exposed slopes. They looked to have occurred at different times. One fresh-looking one on the backside of Joe's area heading into Morse Creek.