April 23, 2016, Commonwealth

Dwindling snowpack, middling weather, and no big plans made today a good one to look for December's missing skier. No luck, but as always with these things, I learned more about a familiar place.

Snowpack: tree wells are beginning to open up. On the approach, dirt is visible around most trunks. Higher, particularly in heavily-treed areas, things are opening, but not enough to make any search definitive. In open terrain, like the slide path to the east of the tree triangle, quite a bit more melt is requisite.  The luge track is skiable, but navigation will become more difficult soon. Similarly, with another foot of melt, it will become increasingly difficult to move efficiently through the forest.

The skiing is poor in the forests; lots of plant material atop corrugated/cupped snow. If you're up there searching, save the margins of open terrain for the down and explore the forests on the up.

There are still sagging snowbridges across the waterfall creek down low. I crossed it high on the way in, on the PCT ledge, and got kinda wet from the splattering waterfall.

Caltopo map with GPX track is here -- if you ski Commonwealth in the next couple of weeks with a GPS, please keep your eyes open and post a named/dated track to the map. Edit password is 'Monty'. 

http://caltopo.com/m/33LR