Toured up the Marion Lake trail access with the goal of riding a north/northwest facing apsect into the South Fork of Dickey Creek. At 9:30am in Essex it was only 14 degrees, making the beginning of the skin track a bit icy/challenging. Once to the lake we noticed a lot of surface hoar hanging around and some old wet slides from yesterday on the steeper more rocky south facing terrain. On the way up the south aspect on the ridge just north of Marion lake we didn't notice any large roller balls. During snack time up top we heard a few and saw one wet slide come down on the steeper slopes just NW of us. All seemed to be point release from rockier terrain and didn't travel extremly far. North facing terrain/shady areas up high (around 7,000') held light snow and a lot of sparkly surface hoar. Dropping into our line on the north facing aspect we create some sizable sluff (enough to partially bury a person). The lower down we rode the less our sluff was an issue. On the skate out to Dicky Creek it didn't seem like the lower shady terrain warmed up too much . Overall, the differnece between south and north facing aspects is night and day.
