May 21, 2017, Interglacier

There is continuous snow at the trailhead, but you'll soon be walking. After a prominent creek crossing in one of the slide paths that crosses the trail, maybe 1/3 of the way to Glacier Basin, we were able to start skinning on continuous snow for the whole rest of the way. We crossed the stream where the old road breaks from the final set of switchbacks climbing to Glacier Basin camp and took the far side of the riverbank, which I think was better than the alternative.

Snow conditions were not great, lots of unconsolidated (about 8-14" above the older crust) which only had a slight freeze the night before. Top ~800' of the Inter was good corn-like snow, deteriorating rapidly the further down you got. Some wet slide activity was coming down from Ruth and the rocks near St Elmo's pass, so keep your head up for that.

It looked like a number of skiers came down off the summit yesterday. Snow on the upper mountain looked good since they were arcing fast turns, especially in the Corridor. We heard it was still dry powder above the Corridor, some sastrugi and wind effect. Maybe it'll be sticky now that winds have died down and the warming has strengthened.