Cold and wet snow on Elephant's Hump

     I toured up to the summit of Elephant's Hump today. The snow conditions along the way were variable with areas of cold dry snow, wet hard surfaces, and areas of wind effected snow. I found maybe 2 to 3 inches of new snow from Tuesday's weather. This new snow was affected by the wind during the storm and presented wind affected areas and some isolated small wind slabs on ridgelines; however, nothing of significant size. There was also areas where the new snow has already been capped by a melt freeze crust. Hand shears on both wind slab and melt freeze crusts were resistant planar at best and the interface appears to be gaining strength. In general, this area had a 1/2" of widespread smooth surface snow that has already begun the melt freeze cycle today as the snow softened up by noon. At the summit, there was a steady moderate wind out of the SW, but no transporting was observed. From here I could see small to medium sized cornices along Polaris bowl, Elephant's back and Little Round Top ridgeline into Meiss Meadow. Most of them showed no signs of recent instability besides some minor loose wet debris below them. By 1:30 @ 9000' cold dry snow on shaded aspects had developed a 1-2cms of wet surface snow forming from the rise in ambient air temperatures. I chose to ride a SE aspect on the way out and the snow was corn like with small pinwheels forming on ski cuts and turns; however, there was minimal growth as there was only a 1/2" of new snow to build upon. Riding became sticky at times going in and out of cold snow and wet saturated snow while riding in and around trees. It will take a couple of days to restart the corn cycle in this area. No other signs of instability was observed along my tour.