Wet Snow on Mt. Judah

I went out in the afternoon today to see how much wet snow forms at the peak of daytime warming. When I left the parking lot at noon, it was warm and sunny. The shaded northerly aspects that I skinned up still had a shallow layer of soft cold snow, but any slope with sun on it or slopes that had previously seen sun had either wet snow (NW-W-SW-S-SE) or a thin melt-freeze crust (NE-E). As I got into more open areas near Wildflower Ridge and along the top of Mt. Judah, signs of strong winds last week existed everywhere in the form of large cornices, drifts, rain crusts exposed by scouring, and sastrugi. Some of the cornices have started to round over at the edges. 

I continued over to the southerly facing slopes and found 3-4 inches of soft wet snow on the surface. This snow had not fully transitioned to spring corn snow but it is getting close. These slopes had been in the direct sun for several hours at this point and the wet snow had become sticky. I ski cut a few steeper test slopes on the sunny slopes. I did get a few small pinwheels and rollerballs to release but they did not entrain much snow. As I departed the area around 2:45, slopes that had moved into the shade had already started to refreeze.