Waterhouse Peak

Looking for shady less travelled spots that have been protected from the recent winds, I visited the terrain between Waterhouse and Powderhouse Peak today. Unsurprisingly, quite few other folks had similar ideas and this terrain had plenty of old tracks many of which were firm. Still this theory was valid and I found enjoyable soft snow when I could avoid previous tracks. Undisturbed snow in the shady trees was soft near surface facets from the base area until the final few hundred feet near the summit ridge where the winds beat up and packed the snow.  Overall coverage is still a bit lacking on the lower half or so here and with the weakening of the surface snow barely covered rocks and logs are easy to hit while descending. The south west facing slopes across Hwy 89 from Grass Lake were nearly bare of snow. Looking out towards Stevens and Blue Lakes there were some large patches of glistening "snow" that I couldn't bring myself to document with a photo.