Tallac Observation

Reading today's forecast I expected conditions to be transitioning today from the colder temps of the last few days to above freezing temps. I thought about route options and avoiding steeper sunnier slopes in the afternoon. I did not remember to think about what happens to cold wintry snow during the first big warm up when you skin accross it. Luckily my skin wax was in my backpack and I only had to stop five times to scrape off the heavy snow and rewax my skins. In addition to the soft snow sticking to my skins, I predictably also found snow on sunnier slopes that had already gone through a melt process and was firm in the morning and softened to varying degrees throughout the day. Above 9000 feet on a sunny skin track around 1pm I did make some small wet snow pinwheels while traversing a steep slope. I didn't notice any other signs of instability on my tour. I descended on the NE side of E ridge and mostly found soft cold snow. Moving over to a more E aspect below 7600 feet I found some breakable crust that quickly transitioned to decent corn. There are certainly more and more obstacles poking out on sunny slopes at lower elevations. 

Photo 1: Lots of snow glopping on the skins today

Photo 2: 1-2 cm boot penetration at 10:15am on a low angle E aspect clearing at about 7200 

Photo 3: Looking north towards Cascade Lake and Emerald Bay

Photo 4: Looking west towards Kalmia Ridge. I didn't see any wet loose slides.

Photo 5: Firm turns on an E aspect just after 1pm around 7600 feet. Lower elevation and sunnier more south facing aspects were softer.