930am too late for Seneca Chutes

By 930am, we found the Seneca Chutes to be unsupportable, and determined the likelihood of wet instability or leg twisting injury too high to continue.

Pic 1: Under Seneca Chutes at 9am, and the surface snow was already getting punchy.

Pic 2: Also under Seneca Chutes, mitt pits showed a thick but breakable surface crust, and over 1ft of wet and very wet grains under that (SWAG pg 28). These grains were loose and weak.

Pic 3: Wet loose debris from ski tracks yesterday. Even where there was no debris, previous tracks cut deep into the snow, and might take a few days of warm weather, rain, or new snow to smooth over again.

Pic 4: We briefly considered Echo, but the large cornices overhead turned us away.

We changed plans to a NE ascent/descent for more supportable conditions. On an E aspect at 8000ft, and a NE aspect at 8400ft, test pits showed strong snow in the top 3ft of snowpack. Below the current surface crust, 2 other crusts were found in the top 1.5ft, with no signs of instabilities near these crusts. Buried surface hoar was observable, but not reactive to informal/formal tests. Moist grains observed below the surface crust at both locations, but nothing wetter than moist.