Feb 25, 2017, Crooked and Circus Couloirs

sorry, no photos.

wandery/wacky skin track up in the phantom trees...hopefully this gets reset to something a little more the norm with this next round of snow.  Ski crampons useful lower down on the skin track.  Lots of folks heading for the Slot, passing by the entry we saw a queue of eight waiting for their turn to drop in.  Really poor visibility on top, but good enough to poke our way over to the Crooked entry/saddle.  No cornice, no ice, fast sluffing new snow but really nice knee deep powder.  Once we got to the trees in the bowl, the poor viz didn't matter.  Nice snow all the way to the hourglass- still has some ice/rock/junk right in the middle, but can be avoided by going off to the sides.  Our party of four removed most of the powder from the narrowest section, so it might be scratchy for a few days.
The thunder creek apron had lots of slot couloir skier tracks.  We continued down and right to access the Circus.  Fortunately a party of four had already boot-packed it making for much easier access...still a knee-deep wallow where their sluff had covered the bootpack. 
Looks like good coverage a long ways down the Middle Fork right now.   
Skiing the phantom trees was a mix of occasionally good snow and lots of suncrust, scraped icy crust and ski tracks.