Corn Snow and Some Cloud Cover on Castle Peak

We thought that the periods of forecasted cloud cover today would slow the surface melt down. We did an afternoon tour hoping to catch soft corn snow conditions on the W and SW aspects of Castle Peak. As we skinned up we moved across many aspects below 8000 ft. and encountered a variety of surface snow conditions. On N and NW aspects variable breakable crusts were widespread with a few isolated patches of shallow soft snow in open areas sheltered from the winds. W and NW aspects in below treeline areas held wet sticky snow that had not undergone enough melt-freeze cycles to become corn.

Once we got above treeline at around 2:30 pm, snow conditions improved. We found 5-8 cm (2-3 inches) of soft corn snow on top of a supportable base on the open W-SW-S aspects exposed to the sun and wind. Some rocks have started to melt out on these slopes but overall good coverage exists. We did not see any current signs of loose wet instabilities. We did notice several periods of cloud cover moving through the area today, but it did not prevent the snow surface from softening nicely on these sun-exposed southerly and westerly aspects.