Strong overnight refreeze in the Mount Rose area.

We toured the E ridge of Relay Peak this morning. Below freezing air temperatures last night at the Slide Mtn weather station and clear skies had us anticipating a strong overnight refreeze of the upper snowpack. That is exactly what we found with the top 9 inches of the snowpack refrozen at P to K hard. A strong refreeze existed on both open slopes and under areas of forest canopy.

Snow surface melt occurred rapidly during the mid and late morning hours. By 10:30 am there was a couple of inches of wet melt-freeze snow over supportable crust on E aspect terrain at 9,600'. Conditions were similar but with a little bit deeper amount of surface wet snow on S aspect terrain near 9,500' at 11:30 am. We encountered ski supportable conditions right up to our departure from the area around noon. Only in isolated areas of very thin snow cover did we encounter any areas that were not ski supportable.

All indications were that as the afternoon progressed, the substantial melt rates would create enough surface wet snow amounts on solar aspects for human triggered wet loose avalanches to become possible in steep terrain.