Wet surface snow in wind protected areas on Rubicon Peak, all aspects.

We toured Rubicon Peak this morning, looking at snow surface refreeze from last night and surface wet snow development today. A decent but superficial snow surface refreeze occurred last night on open slopes and a very poor snow surface refreeze occurred under forest canopy. This is consistent with a refreeze driven by radiational cooling during above freezing air temperatures overnight.

Moderate speed SW winds were present along the ridgetops. Any areas of wind exposed slopes that we encountered were still frozen firm at 11:30 am. At the same time, wind protected slopes that we traveled on N-NE-E aspects all held surface wet snow with roller balls and pinwheels easily triggered off of ski turns. On open slopes this surface wet snow was a few inches deep but supportable to travel on skis in the areas we traveled between 7,600' and 9,000'. On heavily treed N aspects where last nights refreeze was very poor, conditions were becoming unsupportable to travel on skis at 7,000' at noon.