Isolated Surface Hoar on Open SE Slopes

We toured out to Slide Mountain from the Tahoe Meadows area with the goal of skiing the due south face down into the upper part of the Ophir Creek drainage. Touring up the west ridge of Slide, the snow surface was significantly wind and sun affected, with large wind pillows and frozen tree bombs making skinning fairly challenging. On the descent, the upper layer of snow was supportable and had gone through at least a few days of full melt-freeze cycles. The snow surface was still somewhat uneven and there were several wind features towards the top of the peak. At the bottom of the slope, the snow hadn't gone through as much melt-freeze and was not as supportable.

On the skin back, we observed surface hoar on an open southeast slope that hadn't gone through any melting and the crystals were still intact. It seems like this feature was limited to lower angle slopes on south facing terrain, but on north facing terrain it could possibly have been more widespread.