Sunny Day on Relay Peak

On the way into Relay Peak, 1-2 inch deep wet snow existed on the lower elevation sun-exposed slopes by 11 am. On the shaded N-facing slopes, some patches of soft snow still lingered despite the warm weather. I dug a quick snowpit to look at potential weak layers in the upper snowpack on one of these N-facing slopes. While there was a small layer of loose snow near the surface (the beginnings of a near-surface facet layer), none of my snowpit tests yielded unstable results (ECTN x2, PST 100/100 END).

I continued up onto more sun-exposed E and SE facing slopes onto Relay Ridge. These also held wet snow and the surface was shaped by the sun melting small features into the snow (mini penitentes). When I got to about 9800 ft, I found less wet snow on the sun-exposed slopes, more firm surfaces, and increased SW winds. I switched over to the N-NE aspects and found firm wind-packed snow and wind-sculpted surfaces. I let the S and SE aspects soften a bit more until about 1 inch of soft wet snow had formed on the S aspects at 1:30 pm. As I descended the wet snow got deeper and the winds decreased. By 9200 ft. 3-4 inches of wet snow existed on a barely supportable melt-freeze crust. I moved over to slopes less steep than 30 degrees for the rest of the descent. I did find one small steep SE facing test slope and a ski cut on this slope did release a small sluff of loose wet snow.

Skies remained sunny into the afternoon. The SW winds increased throughout my tour.