Habeggar's

Steve, Anne and I got together and initially headed up the South Fork of Bishop Creek from the road end to see what looked good. We headed part way up a broad gully when we decided that the skiing was going to be awful there. The wind had formed the skiers nemesis; breakable crust.

We skied back to the car, drove the short distance to Habeggar's, and skinned up the old road to the glades, hoping that they held good snow as they usually do.

As we traveled up the slopes the big views opened up and we could see that the winds were still howling over the higher peaks. Thankfully the wind was light in the glades, although it was downright frigid, with temps in the teens most of the day.
Here's Steve and Anne on the ridge eager to take the first run of the day.
Anne drops in.
The snow proved to be quite good, as Steve will attest.
Anne was smiling too.
Love them glades!
I thought we did a darn good job of salvaging the day given our initial disappointment.

The overall snow stability was good. We saw no shooting cracks nor did we experience any collapsing snow. There were hollow sounding slabs, but we did not encounter them in steep terrain.

There was evidence of several small slabs that appeared to release during the most recent storm. They were in the 4" to 6" range. Wind deposited snow and/or additional snowfall obscured the crowns and debris. They mostly occurred on North, Northeast, and East facing slopes amongst or just below rock outcrops.

In more open areas the wind had created dangerous looking crossloading in many of the gullies, although we saw no natural releases of these slabs.