skied saturday.
-snow about 1.5mile from cold springs~ and once on it was fairly continuous. used trail runners didnt take skis or boots off pack until 10,500ft. was just that much faster.
-cattle trail still heads to the 'winter' variation, more to the east, right by the west side of South Butte and then up to LC. I prefer the other way by the crescent glacier/snowfield more, the snow is broken by bands of rock just up from south butte..so skinning continuous would be a challenge.
-chutes were pretty great sometime after 12:30. We may have skied them as late as 2? Not bad, technically could have been a little better but i think will only improve with a bit more sun-cycling. there was wind-compacted new snow just below the summit that was fun to ski.
-traversed over i think around 6200? will have to look at gps log to confirm. about 15 minutes of skinning, mostly traversing, very little uphill [100-150ft total?]and just 5 ft of taking skis off took us back to the corniced lip just below the crescent glacier. From there an easy ski back to snow line (managed to stay on snow until .5mile as the crow flies to the car)
-i personally would not go low, but maybe i could be convinced by hearing something tantalizing abt that option
