Narrower corn window today on Rubicon.

We toured the N and E aspects of Rubicon Peak this morning. Last night's snow surface refreeze was decent below about 8,500' and stronger higher up. In most areas the top 4 inches of the snow surface had refrozen but at only 1F- hardness. A stronger P hardness surface melt-freeze crust existed above about 8,500'.

Descending from about 9,000' at 11:10 am, E aspects were still ski supportable, but the surface wet snow was mushy and cohesive. Boot penetration indicated that ski supportability was not going to last much longer. This seemed like a shorter window for optimal ski conditions today, likely due to the warmer air temps both last night and today.

We moved over to ENE to NE aspect terrain for better snow surface conditions. Conditions were fairly similar to the E aspect terrain, but with slightly shallower ski penetration in to surface wet snow. Once we had descended to around 7,700' we encountered decreasing supportability and deeper boot penetration of up to 8 inches on NE to N aspects.

The progression of wet snow conditions today seemed conducive to human triggered wet loose avalanches becoming possible this afternoon in steeper terrain.