March 26, 2016, N ridge of Cannon Mt.

Despite my best intentions of getting a big day in on Saturday I gave up the morning to caucusing and spring projects, and wound up parking at bridge creek a little after 2pm.  Given my late start I set off to scout conditions on the north ridge of Cannon Mountain.  I basically followed the Northern edge of the burn up from Mountaineers Creek Rd about 1/8 of a mile from the Stuart lake trail-head, taking a slight detour along the old logging rd looking for the best isothermal slush to suffer up.  At 6100' I moved climbers right across an open basin and into a slight gully that continued for another 1400' feet to the ridge.  I wound up stopping just shy of the ridge due to windslab concerns and reversed my route back to the car, which yielded 3800' of quality descent, and 600' of isothermal bushwacking back to the road.  By far the highlight of the afternoon was a rad flock of ptarmigan I encountered in the old burn.  I would definitely use this line to descent from Cannon Couloir if I had the gas to skin back up after exiting the couloir - the skiing in the gully was really high quality.

Conditions:
Road is gated, and is likely to be for a while based on the amount of snow above 3k.  the road is pretty well melted out until around 2700', but the snow line should move up to the shade pretty fast with this weather.

I found isothermal mush below 3800'

Between 3800 and 5500 corn

Above 5500 ft shaded aspects held powder

Above 6200 ft all aspects held a lot of powder, with a sun crust forming on the sunnier aspects.

Significant wind slab on all northern ridges/aspects that were cross-loaded above 5500'.  The windslab between my high point and the top of the ridge was formed in a slight depression that appeared to have been cross-loaded, and was approximately 150' X 150', and vibrated alarmingly when I skinned out onto it.