Killer Corn to Egregious Egress

Having a pretty good idea of what we were getting into, we headed up to the Apgars today to look for wet snow instabilities and look at the snowpack structure on mid-elevation, northerly slopes.

• The refreeze overnight at lower elevations was about 1" thick with boot-top ski penetration, even early in the day. The snow was more supportable on skis above about 4500' where the freeze was about 3" deep. Boot penetration ranged from crotch deep down low (all day) to a few inches at mid-elevations (by noon).
• About 2" of new snow from yesterday and overnight sat atop a supportable melt-freeze crust above 5000'. It was becoming moist by noon on S-E-N aspects and we could trigger a few small rollers. We saw some recent small rollers on low elevation, northerly slopes. No other signs of recent activity that we could see.
• We found no obvious persistent weak layers, and had no concerning snowpack test results at 2 different locations on mid-elevation, northerly slopes. Recent melt water has pooled and formed ice lenses and vertical ice flutes running throughout the snowpack on these aspects. The snow where we dug on a NW aspect was still dry and wintry. Dust on breakable crust.
• We skied SE aspects between noon and 1pm and found great corn between 5800' and 4500'. Below that, as expected, things became less and less supportable and we found ourselves bushwhacking and sinking in to our knees in wet snow on the way back to the road. Creeks are opening up at lower elevations adding open water to the hazard list.