Angora Peak Observation

Toured around Angora Peak today finding very different snow based on aspect and time of day. Looking both towards Echo Peak and towards the Crystal Range we could see very large cornices. By late morning sunny steep facing slopes held a few inches of soft snow over a firm base. Countering to below tree line east facing slopes we found more transitional snow as the still cold snow was somewhat wet but still wintry. We also experienced glopping as this snow stuck to our skins. Descending north facing terrain in the early afternoon we created quite a few roller balls traversing over a steep slope. Although we did find some firm wind slab near ridges I wasn't able to produce any cracking or signs of instability there. Signs of instability we did observe were limited to wet loose roller balls. 

Photo 1: Absolutely gigantic cornices on Echo Peak. There were some debris chunks below the cornice but it appeared that whatever had fallen was pretty minor relative to the overall size of the cornice. 

Photo 2: Shallow warming on a steep SE slope at 11:00AM. Soft snow was not quite corn on the surface over a firm crust that skied well 

Photo 3: On a more easterly aspect there was impressive evidence of previous avalanche activity. Although several weeks have passed and a few storms have likely occurred since this area avalanched, the evidence of snow pushed against trees and high on tree trunks, and the random broken bits of tree sticking out from the middle of slide paths was impressive to observe. 

Photo 4: The most roller ball activity we observed was on a NE slope around 1:45pm. 

Photo 5: Looking back towards Desolation and the coverage is very impressive.