Wet snow on Andesite/Castle.

The afternoon was warm as expected for an afternoon tour on Andesite Peak. Traveling along the Castle Rd showed numerous areas where the base of the snowpack was very wet to saturated with free water. The top inch of the snowpack was consistently and uniformly wet on all aspects in both sun and shade at all elevations traveled up to the summit of Andesite Peak at about 8,200'. Light rain fell in the area yesterday afternoon and may have contributed to the wet snow surface.

Looking across at the open SW face of Castle Peak showed a few roller balls that had come off of the cliffs and one very small loose wet sluff.

I continually probed a consistent 2 to 3 feet of snow on all aspects traveled. I stopped to dig a pit and look at the lower snowpack on a NE aspect at 7,880 on the edge of a below treeline avalanche path. The existing snowpack was right side up, very wet at the top and bottom and moist to wet throughout the middle portions. I saw no indications of problematic instability in my snowpit test results.

Ascending above treeline I saw some small cornices that had formed along the ridgetop during the storm and no evidence of scouring from post storm NE winds. Kicking a few cornice sections above small test slopes and ski cutting a couple of very small test slopes revealed no signs of wind slab instability. The cornice sections entrained some of the wet upper snowpack and created a few small roller balls.

Descending was all about avoiding avalanche terrain for wet snow instability and avoiding injury skiing the wet heavy snow that had fairly deep ski penetration.