Spring Conditions and Manzanita in Johnson Canyon

Cloud cover this morning seemed to have slowed down the surface melting of the snowpack today. We encountered a mix of firn surfaces and shallow soft wet snow on the skin up sun-exposed W and SW facing slopes at noon. By 1 pm, widespread shallow corn conditions existed on these aspects with about 2-3 cm (~1 in) of wet surface snow sitting on top of a still frozen and supportable base. We did not see any signs of deeper wet snow or loose wet instabilities even on the lower elevation sun-exposed slopes. 

Melting snow has exposed numerous obstacles and patches of bare ground at the lower elevations in Johnson Canyon. This lack of coverage extended up to 7600 ft on true S and SSW aspects in this area. We had to traverse these dirt patches and navigate around open creeks until we got above 6800 ft and moved to more W and WSW aspects. In these areas coverage was decent, but we still had to dodge manzanita bushes sticking out of the snow.