Variety of Aspects in Johnson Canyon

By the time I started skinning up the E face of Johnson Canyon at 10:45 am, it was soft and wet. I saw some other people descending as I went up and the snow looked soft but still supportable. They timed the E face descent well, but by the time I got to the top at 11:00 am, the wet snow was up to my ankle. I decided to keep going and head for a higher elevation S aspect that had not seen quite as much sun yet today. On my way up I noticed several large cornices near the ridgeline. Many of these had icicles hanging off of them that were dripping water. I went up to a very small one for a picture and avoided all of the larger ones. 

I arrived at the top of the S-facing slope around 11:45. I stepped off my skis and found about 2 inches of soft wet snow resting on a still supportable melt-freeze crust. As I descended I ski cut a couple of small S and SE facing steep test slopes. My ski cuts did not produce any wet snow instabilities. 

Next, I ascended a ridge with more large cornices on the ENE side of the ridge. I gave the cornices a wide berth. At one point I saw a crack in the snow on the ridge about 15 ft from the edge where one of the large cornices was pulling away from the ridge. I also saw some large cornice pieces on the slope below from a previous cornice failure. I took a look at the exposed N aspects off the ridge. They were scoured and I could see the rain crust shining on them. I found a lower angle ENE slope to descend. This slope held some wet transitional snow sitting on top of the rain crust.

My descent put me at the base of the W aspects so I headed up to take a look at those slopes. At the top of the W aspects, the snow had not softened much when I arrived at 1:30 pm. It remained firm until I got below 7200 ft. At that point, 1-2 inches of soft corn snow existed on the melt-freeze crust. 

While I did not see roller balls, pinwheels, or loose wet avalanches in my tour, I did see plenty of wet snow and signs of warming indicating that those wet snow instabilities might be possible later in the day.