Quick report
We toured out of the Castle Peak trailhead towards Castle Pass and up onto the "lunch rock" feature. At the start of our tour we observed a trace of snow on the ground, as we climbed in elevation the depth grew up to 7 - 9 cm. We experienced light snowfall throughout that tapered off around 2:00pm and we saw fleeting patches of blue sky throughout. Light winds were observed throughout our tour with minimal effects of any wind noticed during our ski. Around 1:30pm we dug a pit on a north facing aspect at 8100' elevation. Here we found a snow depth of 106cm with numerous crust layers throughout the snowpack. We noted that the faceted snow in the lower portion of our snow pit had a noticeable amount of moisture in it and that the grains appeared to be in the rounding phase. We conducted a few stability tests and got no results on all tests conducted. As we worked our way toward Andesite Peak the sun began to attempt to emerge in earnest. Along our ridge walk we noted no cornice development from this small burst of weather. The best skiing was found on aspects with no previous ski tracks that held a supportable crust layer - here the skiing was quite enjoyable! Old tracks and rutted skin tracks provided expectedly bumpy rides.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 8
Snowpack
A trace up to 2.75" of new snow had fallen and was observed on our tour. Old snow consists of ice layers throughout with a healing facet layer towards the bottom of the snowpack.