Castle Crag

We toured in the Incline Lake Peak area to look at wet snow development today.  While postholing up the snow bank to put our skis on at the trailhead, it was evident that little to no refreeze had occurred overnight.   Most open areas had a thin melt freeze crust with wet surface snow above and wet snow below.  This thin m/f crust provided mostly ski supportable conditions for most of the morning hours.  Increasing SW winds and cloud cover did little to delay daytime warming effects and wet snow development.  By the late morning hours, the thin melt freeze crust was weakening and becoming wet snow making for deeper unsupportable wet snow conditions on E-SE-S aspects.  We opted to move back to a North aspect slope on our exit for more ski supportability and avoided a SE aspect that may have made for colliding with rocks and bushes more likely.