Sunny and Clear on Castle Peak

The various aspects and elevations on Castle Peak provided ample places to see possible wet snow issues and assess lingering wind slab instability. The snow surface remained cold and soft when we arrived and started skinning up. Surface hoar formed during the night on most open areas.

When we got to the ridge, we kicked some cornices pieces onto E and SE facing wind-loaded test slopes. These slopes had direct sun, and one of the cornice pieces triggered a small wind slab mixed with a shallow sluff of damp snow. Another cornice piece just caused a sluff of wet snow. Farther up the ridge, we ski cut some small N-facing test slopes without results. Snowpit tests in these test slopes also did not produce unstable results. We saw scoured surfaces as we looked up to the NW-facing aspects. 

We descended N-facing slopes and found cold soft snow. Once we got below 8000 ft, we found some areas of wet snow in sunny spots. When we returned to the ridge and moved over to the S-facing side, about 1-2 inches of wet snow existed on the surface, with another 2 inches of cold snow on top of an old crust below it. We saw some rollerballs and pinwheels coming off nearby rocks as we descended. On the way out, we came down an E aspect where the wet snow that had formed in the morning had started to refreeze as the slope moved into the shade, leaving a thin melt-freeze crust on the surface. We also noticed that the surface hoar we had seen in the morning had started to flatten and melt by the afternoon.