Aspen

Snowpack

Anonymous · Mar 25, 2014 · Aspen

Weather

Blue bird and warmed up considerably throughout the day. No wind until we got onto the ridge. It blew 15-20 consistently out of the SW.

Snowpack

The skin up was on mostly hard crust.Near the saddle w Whitehouse (Skyline Mine) there's an area full of gendarmes which sort of block the path (cornices had blown up around them) forcing us to boot up around them to gain the summit ridge. This was a bit scary because those weaker crust layers were very evident near the rocks we were climbing around. At one point I punched through the crust and noticed angular, sugary snow underneath. No propagation or cracking when I broke through but I was very aware of what I was on. The ridge was also crusty and windswept. We observed no signs of weakness besides breaking through on the boot. The snow in the woods was powder but a bit grabby. We found it as soon as we got into the trees. Again, we observed no weaknesses in this snow, great skiing. Below the trees we got out into the old avi path and found the snow had corned up very nicely, still a bit wet but it looked like the whole pack in this zone was corning very uniformly. We descended in 30 minutes.