Wet snow on Castle Peak

On our tour today up the southeast side of Castle Peak, we found a fully supportive melt-freeze crust in open areas this morning that was more breakable in densely treed areas. As the morning progressed and we gained elevation, the day's warm temps and clear skies softened the snow as anticipated, and we saw some impressive pinwheels and some small loose wet activity when we ski cut east--facing test slopes around 7700' at 11:30am (see photos). 

We turned around at about 12:30pm to head down from our high point of about 8200', and found smooth snow on south facing terrain that was mostly enjoyable, but was a bit too sticky and wet in places. We wished we had been descending about an hour earlier for better ski quality. 

Winds throughout the morning were calm to light out of the east, and seemed to do little to mitigate the surface melt.