Quick report
Afternoon tour up Castle felt like spring down low, winter above 8,000’. Mostly sunny skies with intermittent clouds and calm winds all the way to the summit. Lots of tree bombs and dripping down low, trees still caked w/ snow and rime ice above ~8k. Surface hoar was present on most aspects and elevations, including just off the skin track on Castle Valley Road. Surface was a 1” crust that ranged from soft/breakable in shady lower/mid-elevation slopes, to saturated in sunny south-ish aspects, to supportable on N/W aspects above ~8400’. Crust was firming up by the time I exited @4pm.
Avalanche
A couple of D1.5 slab avalanches on the north side of Castle Peak just below the summit (pic 1). They appeared to be shallow wind slabs, didn’t propagate too widely, but ran several hundred feet downslope. Unknown trigger. There were a few ski tracks in the bowl but didn’t see any close to the start zone. D1 wet slides on the south side of Castle (pic 2)