Silver Peak

Silver Peak held a variety of snow conditions depending on aspect, elevation, and time of day. This morning most areas held firm refrozen surfaces. By 11:30 am, one to two inches of soft, wet snow had formed on top of a ski-supportable crust on the sunny E-SE-S-SW facing slopes between 8200 and 7400 ft. We sank right through the crust and up to our shins in wet snow when we stepped off our skis. About 15 minutes later, we started sinking deeper into wet snow on our skis at 7000 ft. We ski-cut a few test slopes but did not trigger wet snow sluffs. We still chose to depart the area before the snow got less supportable. 

Most north-facing aspects had breakable melt-freeze crusts atop loose and colder snow. A few of the more shaded slopes just had a thin layer of colder, loose snow (near surface facets) on the surface.