I enjoyed a fantastic day in the mountains with my friend Anne S. The moraine above Aspendell looked in especially poor shape with enough snow to make booting miserable and not enough snow to make skinning reasonable. So we started down around Intake 2.
An hour and a half later we were here! The snowy hump is the summit.
The big valley gets bigger with snow on the Whites.
Anne does her share of trail breaking.
Higher up the snow was more wind affected but still tolerably decent in the small trees.
This view of Mt Emerson (back) and the Paiute Crags (mid) floored me!
Anne basking in the summit glory.
Big views. Love them big views! The Palisades.
The snow was good in the trees, but you had to keep an eye out for wind crust.
The approach and egress were long and tedious for sure, but very much worth it in our minds.
Snow stability was good. Pole probing revealed little, if any, depth hoar. Hard slab pillows up high were avoided. No cracking or collapsing. We stuck to moderate angled slopes. Snow depth is still shallow, averaging around 60 to 80 cm.
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Thinking of doing something out of sout fork Big Pine Saturday. Give me a call 760-937-3563. Forest--
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