Wet Snow and Wind on Waterhouse Peak

Waterhouse Peak provided a variety of snow conditions today. On shaded slopes where the snow had not gone through melt-freeze cycles, we found breakable crusts with soft weak snow just below the surface crusts. Since there is no slab on top of these crusts and weak snow they are not a problem from an avalanche perspective right now. They do however present a challenge when trying to ski or ride on slopes where these breakable crusts exist.

We decided to try to avoid those breakable conditions in favor of the more spring-like conditions that existed on open sun-exposed slopes. While skinning up the peak we noticed that the SE aspects already held a few inches of soft wet snow on top of a supportable base at 11:15 am. As we gained elevation, we started to encounter stronger winds. By the time we reached the exposed slopes above 8700 ft the wind was preventing the snow surface from softening as much. Once we got to the summit ridge, we discovered that the snow surfaces remained firm and frozen in areas exposed to the winds. 

We turned around and headed down on SE aspects at around 12:30. The slopes remained firm and frozen until we got back to the more wind-sheltered areas where spring-like ski conditions existed. At this time the snow was still ski-supportable but we started to notice that our poles would sometimes sink deeper into wet snow especially around rocks and other obstacles protruding from the snow. 

Snow coverage is decreasing on these sun-exposed aspects.