Observations from Castle Peak

New snow amounts near the trailhead at about 7,300' and along Castle Road were about 6 inches at F+ hard. Several mitt pits and hand shears along the Castle Rd indicated that the new snow had bonded well to the crust at the old/new snow interface. Ski cuts on below treeline test slopes produced only extremely minor sluffing of the top 1-2 inches of the storm snow.

Moving up to Castle Pass and near and above treeline terrain, we began to see the expected wind effects. Wind pillows of storm snow existed in lee areas along the ridge connecting up to Castle Peak. Cutting and stepping on numerous wind slab areas produced no significant cracking or signs of propagating wind slab failure. Ski cutting on several large wind pillows on the NW side of Castle Peak produced no signs of instability.

Cloud cover thinned just enough at midday for a 4F hard sun crust to form at the surface on the E aspects (and most likely S aspects as well) up to at least 8,100'. Shortly thereafter, cloud cover increased and air temperatures dropped noticeably by about 5 degrees. We encountered this sun crust while working our way out of the area via Andesite Ridge.