Loose Wet Avalanche and Wet Snow on Red Lake Peak

We started up Red Lake Peak from the Meiss Trailhead on Carson Pass. As soon as we left the vehicle at 10:30 am, we encountered wet surface snow on the sunny slopes. On the shady slopes, we found a breakable crust on top of softer dry snow. Pushing snow down small sunny test slopes with our poles resulted in roller balls and pinwheels. As we rounded the corner onto a more easterly aspect, we saw recent rollerball activity. We found a low angle route to the ridge and kicked loose a small loose wet avalanche from the ridge on an E facing slope at 8800 ft at 11:00 am (see video). 

We continued uphill using low angle slopes and traveling on ridges. We took a look at E-SE-S-SW aspects. Wet transitional snow existed on all of these aspects up to 9600 ft. We descended using the terrain to our advantage and found that the lower angle previously wind-scoured and wind-packed SW aspects were the most supportable. 

On the way back down we did traverse over to the N-NW side of the ridge near 9000 ft. On those aspects we found firm wind affected snow surfaces.