Quick report
Decided to head up Pyramid to see how the snowpack has been transforming during the long dry spell, hoping that shady N aspects may have dried out and gotten softer and wondering if S aspects have consolidated and begun transitioning into corn. Clear calm day with temps slightly above freezing. Unfortunately it looks like NW, N, and NE slopes had all new snow completely stripped to the rain crust above 8500'. This ice layer was surprisingly difficult to identify while skiing and was only really visible when looking towards the sun, making for treacherous conditions. I dug a small pit and documented what I could. HS65 was quite a bit lower than I'd expected but not unreasonable given the location on a wind exposed ridge. It's also possible that there was an ice layer at the bottom of the pit that I was unable to penetrate. Several ice layers were observed but no near crust facets observed. There is one notably weaker layer (4F) but given the mass of ice above it, it's difficult to imagine a skier being able to affect this snow. Between that and the difficulty of digging the pit, no stability tests were performed. Above 8500' some SE slopes held cold transitional snow which skied well (some SE slopes, including the SE face of Pyramid was boilerplate). On slope with good skiing, uphill travel was difficult because the depth of soft snow was only 5-20cm on top of the rain crust. Below 8500' SE slopes had soft slush and proto-corn which skied well.