Sunrise Summit on 5040

After spending a few days taking it easy at the 5040 hut, we finally had an opportunity to do a quick sunrise summit up 5040 before heading back down the mountain. It was already 5 degrees departing the hut at 6:45 am. The snow had settled drastically since Sunday’s major rain fall, and we didn’t observe any signs of instability, whumphing, or cracking. We did witness on the north east aspect near the summit some old separations on the snow that were likely from the Sunday-Monday very wet conditions. This is shown in the last photo. We chose the slopes with the lowest angles and least overhead hazards to ski back to the hut and had an absolute blast.