Quick report
Found a variety of snow surfaces on the Dana Plateau today. After the sun crested some cloud cover over the Mono Basin around 8:15 this morning, the weather turned out beautiful and warm, with lots of sunshine, and not a breath of wind except on the Plateau. Despite some cloud cover early, the refreeze was good, even down low in the trees, although the crust was thin. V-Bowl had a very supportable, 10 cm thick melt-freeze crust, making for easy travel, but necessitating ski crampons. Once on the bench above, a very stout melt-freeze crust existed everywhere, except shady northerly slopes in gullies, which held mostly faceted wind board and soft surface facets. The apron had a 1-2 cm melt freeze crust over cold faceted snow underneath, but boot pen was still only to mid foot. The chute had two very distinct snow types, but both made for great skiing. The central portion, which has a ton of sun exposure, held almost fully developed proto-corn, that made for supportable boot packing, and pleasant descending at 10:45 am. The very top, and the slight dogleg, which are both fully shaded by the skier's right wall, held cold, wintery, soft faceted snow. There were also some pockets of wind texture and small sastrugi, but these were easily avoided. No cornice existed at the top of the line, but the entrance is quite steep, albeit only for a short distance. There was some very small ice fall off the sunny wall, but this was minimal, and there was no loose wet instability when I descended. I skied the Banana Chute exit out of the V Bowl area around 11:05, and this also held a variety of surfaces. The open, sunny slopes were excellent proto-corn up high, but a little unsupportable below about 8000'. Even where the ski quality was lesser, there was no loose wet instability, or even rollerballing. The skier's right, N facing walls were soft winter snow, while the shaded parts of the gut were a still firm melt-freeze crust. I was on snow basically all the way back to the car.