Mt. Judah

First of all, getting to and from continuous snow cover from Donner Pass is challenging. We had to take skis off and walk a few times on the way up and on the way down. We also had to constantly zig-zag around rocks, bushes, and creeks below Wildflower Ridge at about 7600 ft. Above 7600 ft, the snow coverage improved dramatically on N-NE-E facing slopes. SE-S aspects still only held patchy snow. 

Based on how quickly the snow become wet and soft, it seems like last night's refreeze was not as good as previous nights. The refreeze was even weaker in tree covered areas. Today's warmer weather, strong sun, and calm winds also shortened the window for supportable snow and wet mushy snow formed quickly on sunny slopes. By noon, ski cuts on steep E facing slopes triggered pinwheels, and these slopes were barely ski supportable at this point. We decided to move to lower angle terrain and soon found ourselved sinking above our boot tops in wet snow when we stepped off our skis. Northerly aspects also had wet surface snow on them, but those stayed supportable until our departure around 1:30 pm. The wet snow still has some dense storm below it.