Warm sunny day on Picketts peak.

 We toured out near Pickett Peak today. Weather was clear and warm with just enough E-NE breeze to wiggle the ends of tree branches. Snow in this area was the same mixed bag of variable conditions within the forecasted area. To add to that, there was a new melt freeze crust on the surface in lower elevations from the warming over the past few days. The recent warming also broke down a good amount of surface hoar that I observed last week in this area but there was still big protected pockets of surface hoar in this zone. We stopped to probe, dig a pit, and look at surface snow around 7800' in a shaded prtected area. There was an HS of 135cm, shovel shear test results in inconclusive as most of the weak facets would fall off the column. However, there was a planar layer right below the surface crust illustrating poor bonding. As we climbed up air temps continue to rise causing most snow surfaces to warm up and loosen, only dark shaded areas consisted of cold surface snow. When we reached the top around 1330 and started our descent, conditions up high allowed for some good cold snow and made for quality turns. As we lost elevations wet surface snow created a upside down feel causing some small roller balls and wet clumps of snow to fail and slide across the facets right below it. This build up of snow never amounted to much and was the only signs of instability we saw through out our tour.