April 12, 2003, Yodelin

Needed a short quick tour to solo with no av danger to try out some recently acquired gear, Yodelin fit the bill. Was originally going to go Hyak but was hoping the additional 1100 foot start elev might give better snow. Myabe, maybe not. Got all kinds of weather just in the space of a couple hours: rain, snow, sun. Saw only old tracks today.
Coverage at bottom might soon become an issue, could see a lot of alder about to fight its way out of the snow. Snow was a breakable "wet wallboard" crust that mostly didn't break on descent, and the top 300' or so actually qualified as decent spring snow and would be worth yoyoing, the rest was just travel.
Saw evidence of one very small and probably human triggered slide at the top where it was probably wind loaded, but seeing evidence of even small slide was surprising because wasn't that steep. Looking cross valley to the other side of the highway there were a lot of near climax slides; another reason I went Yodelin as opposed to Skyline or something was the specific mention in the av report of south facing slopes being where the action was gonna be, looks like that was holding true.