Decent but short lived refreeze on E aspects Relay Peak

We went to Relay Peak this morning to assess last night's refreeze and this morning's melt rates at the upper elevations. As anticipated we encountered a decent and very supportable refreeze of the top 4 inches of the snowpack with about 1.5 feet of residual wet snow below the crust that had not refrozen overnight in typical spring fashion. This decent but superficial surface refreeze existed both on open slopes and on treed slopes, created by below freezing air temperatures last night. Cloud cover last night would have limited radiational cooling as a refreeze mechanism.

Despite the mostly cloudy skies, surface melt rates on E-SE aspects were not slowed hardly at all this morning. E aspects at 9,700' were well into melt phase at 9:30 am with 1-2 inches of surface wet snow on top of the remaining crust. E aspect slopes in the 9,100'-9,600' elevation range were just starting to show signs of losing supportability to skis at 10:45 am. Moderate speed W winds were providing some convective cooling on windward aspects, but not on leeward slopes. Exiting from the area around 11 am, SW aspects were still firm and supportable, but slightly less dense than during our morning approach. It was much easier to punch a pole through the surface crust than it had been earlier in the morning.