Corn snow at Red Lake Peak

As forecast, strong E winds kept sunny but wind exposed slopes quite firm today, creating challenging travel conditions. Fortunately, our descent was sunny and sheltered from the wind, with ideal corn snow conditions.

Our route ranged from 8000ft to 9700ft but would classify as "near and above treeline" due to a lack of trees. Without trees on colder slopes to shelter them from the wind, the near surface facets were nowhere near as developed and weak as observed elsewhere recently. I suspect they've been blown away by all the past E/NE wind events. Digging below the surface also did not reveal a significant facet layer.

Pic 1: Wind blown dirt on the snow surface has been absorbing heat and melting at different rates than the surrounding snow, adding to the significant textures developing on sunny surfaces.

Pic 2: More texture on sunny slopes. This remained frozen throughout our travels due to cold winds.

Pic 3: Slightly more cloud cover than expected, and looking closely at the bottom of the dark cloud, it appears that it was even precipitating! But evaporating well before hitting the ground.