AA col

Fair travel to the AA col, breaking through a hard crust into 15-20 cms of low density snow over the season's consolidated snowpack. We didn't encounter any windslab but chose to avoid the actual AA col slope as it looked loaded from Thursday and Friday's storm with winds from the SW. Instead we chose climbers left closer to wind scoured slopes to top out and descend in a gully far left of the AA col. When leaving at 2 pm strong ridgetop.winds were cross loading the crown on Skyladder, as it probably was initially loaded, from the SW.