Corn Snow on SW Aspects of Castle

Sunny warm weather had us quickly shedding layers as soon as we left the trailhead and started skinning. While we were still in the trees on the way into Castle Peak, we checked out some shaded N aspects and found breakable crusts with softer snow and graupel below the crust. On slopes that received any sun in these sheltered areas, we found wet sticky snow. These observations solidified our plan to head for more exposed S-SW aspects where we hoped to find more spring-like snow conditions. 

Once we got above the trees and onto the ridge above Castle Pass, the snow surface remained firm and frozen on the northerly side of the ridge. On the southerly sun-exposed side of the ridge, wet surface snow existed on top of a supportable base. We found spring-like corn snow conditions on the exposed S and SW aspects with 5-8 cm (2-3 in) of wet corn snow on top of a frozen base. We stepped off our skis regularly and noticed that the wet snow was getting deeper (about ankle deep) around 1:30. We took this as a sign that the snow would stop supporting our skis soon so we headed back out to the car.

We tried kicking snow down several test slopes on the way in and out but we did not trigger any signs of loose wet instabilities like roller balls or pinwheels. We did, however, notice some debris from other recent loose wet activity (likely yesterday) in a few spots on the SE and SW aspects of Castle Peak (photo here).