Wind and Clouds on Talking Mtn

Like all ridges the Becker Peak - Talking Mountain ridge has two sides. We climbed up the southerly-facing side of the ridge to get to the northerly-facing terrain on the other side of the ridge. On the southerly-facing side, we could see signs of wet snow from yesterday in the form of small roller balls, deep ski tracks, and some runnels/drainage channels in the snow surfaces. The clouds, cooler temperatures, and winds kept all of these once warm surfaces frozen today. The snow surface consisted of a mix of breakable melt-freeze crusts and firm frozen melt-freeze crusts. We ended up opting to use ski crampons for some of the steeper more exposed sections of the climb. On top of the ridge, the NE winds had left scoured surfaces on the upper N facing slopes. 

When we started descending the N-facing terrain on the other side of the ridge towards Echo Lake, we continued to find some wind-affected snow on open slopes. We also found some thin sun crusts on the lower angle slopes. In steep sheltered areas, we found consistent, soft, unconsolidated snow all the way down to the lake. We ski cut several steep N-facing slopes with no results.

The SW winds increased during our tour and skies remained mostly cloudy with a few short periods where the sun would poke through the clouds.