Premature corn on Castle Peak

We went to Castle Peak this morning to look at rain crust and surface wet snow formation. Air temperature inversion conditions gave a head start to warming this morning at the upper elevations. Moderate speed E winds persisted on the ridgetops through the morning hours, keeping the snow surface frozen along the ridgetops. We picked out a previously hard wind packed true S aspect line for our decent that had benefited from parabolic reflection and exposed rock outcrops to accelerate snow surface warming through the morning hours.

Descending this terrain at 11 am gave a half inch to an inch of enjoyable wet snow over supportable wind pack as the rain and melt/freeze crust from the past two days melted away. As we descended below treeline we moved off of the supportable wind pack and ski and boot penetration became deeper through the thin wet snow into 4F hard dry old snow (old NSFs and DFs). Up to our departure from the area at noon we neither saw nor triggered any rollerballs or other signs of wet snow instability.