April 16, 2009, Snow Lake Dusk Patrol

Powtothepeople and I set out at 5:30PM from the upper alpental lot in search of alpenglow skiing.  The skin out to the source lake drainage was good and fast.  We ascended the ridge to the bootpack below chair peak up to the top of the shot down to the western shores of snow lake.

By the time we reached the top of the bootpack, dusk was closing in.  In hindsight, that would've been the smarter place to turn back and ski back to the parking lot the way we had come.  The reason for this is that our estimated 20-30 more minutes of daylight lasted more like 5.  However, as we were both quite familiar with the area and the the fact that the snow was stable, we pressed on.

We skinned out by headlamp across snowlake, up the ridge, and back to source then to the car.  The skiing was marginal at best, bottomless sticky slop with breakable crust.  Need a few more melt-freeze cycles to make it firm up some.

There was evidence of several medium to large wet slabs that we saw, probably 1-2 days old, but nothing went while we were touring, and given the lateness of the day and that things firmed up as we went, we were undeterred.  No pictures (you wouldn't have been able to see much except the glow of our headlamps in the black anyway).  Pray for corn.