Virginia Lakes/Upper Green Creek drainage

We toured on a variety of aspects and elevations today and found that strong west winds limited softening of snow surfaces. We did not observe signs of wet snow instability at any aspect or elevation throughout our tour today.

Use of ski or boot crampons was necessary while traveling on N and E aspects in alpine terrain. Small amounts of snow was getting blown around at high elevations. North facing alpine terrain held a variety of surfaces: windboard, pockets of soft wintry snow, sastrugi, and slick crust.

Alpine southerly aspects remained firm  in afternoon hours. Lower elevation south facing terrain softened at lower elevations but remained supportable until we reached flat terrain near rocks, willows and aspens.