Transitional Snow in Rose Area

We toured in the Houghton Peak and Tamarack Peak area today searching for spring skiing. At 10k on southeast facing slopes, we found a solid 8-12 cm crust on top of dense, but cold and untransitioned, snow. Surface melt was limited in areas exposed to moderate east winds. In protected areas, we found that the top 2-5cm of snow had softened by 11 am, providing fantastic ascent and descent conditions. On South faces below 9k we found mostly corn snow, though even at these elevations coverage is dwindling.

On one north facing slope at 9500 I noted that the snow had not undergone any freeze-thaw cycles, and was still consolidated cold snow.