Short corn window on Castle Peak

We took a group to the south side of Castle Peak today to look for some corn snow conditions.  Even with well above overnight temperatures, radiational cooling of the snowpack provided a superficial refreeze of the snow surface.  The overnight refreeze did not last long though with E aspects already breaking down and becoming deep wet snow by 10am.  We descended a S aspect at 11am with good supportable corn snow conditions.  On our way back up, these S aspects were also loosing supportability with collapsing and cracking around our skies as the upper snow was wet and unsupportable.  We picked a SW aspect to descend next and it held together pretty well until we reached lower elevations where all snow was wet, deep, and sticky.  The moderate SW winds were helping a little cooling the snow surface at the higher elevations, but were adding nothing down lower.  Even with all the wet deep snow, loose wet instabilities were limited with established drainage channels through the snowpack and almost 2 weeks of melt freeze cycles occurring.