Transitioning Snow on Maggies

Skied the middle of the three couloirs on South Maggie's South Face. New snow amounts ranged from less than 1" at the trailhead, to about 3" at the summit. Where this snow has seen sun, it had already started to consolidate into the existing snowpack, but in shady areas, this was still cold and soft. We left the car around 7:50, with temperatures below freezing, but no wind, and blue skies. When we topped out an hour later, temps were still below freezing at the summit, but the sun felt warm, and there was a very light breeze. There were some banners of snow coming off Dicks Peak, but otherwise not much evidence of wind transport, except for some previous drifting along the ridge between Maggies North and South.

We dropped at 9:15, and conditions were already quite soft. The skier's left side, with a more southerly tilt, that had seen more sun, was more predictable corn snow, while the right sides were still soft wintery snow, but heating up fast. We triggered some rollerballs and small loose-wet panels, but nothing of significance. There was some natural icefall and small loose wet activity coming off rocky areas as well by this point. There was a runnel down the center of the line, but overall, ski conditions were pretty excellent. The lower angle apron was still uncconsolidated snow, and also heating up, even becoming a little sticky. The steep, southeasterly slopes above Cascade Lake on the traverse out had been cooked down nicely, and would be excellent corn skiing.

Of note, we did see what looked to be a fairly recent glide avalanche, on the rocky slabs to the west of Eagle Lake, in an area where we had previously seen a growing glide crack. Otherwise, we did not see evidence of any natural loose wet slides of significance from this most recent storm.