May 15, 2006, Snow Lake

We took the neice on her first backcountry experience up to Snow Lake today.  The track up to the basin is littered with needles and debris that significantly slowed the ski out There is still plenty of snow in the basin. I sunk my probe to 240 cm at Snow Lake before hitting ground. Very warm temperatures, very soft snow, pole penetration in the rotten snow about 10". The snow had not set up overnight. We set off repeated small sluffs on steeper uptracks, but very small and slowly moving.

I hate to say this, but it felt almost like skiing heavy heavy powder.  You had to lean way back and were able to "porpoise" turns, sort of like powder.  We even had to stamp out platforms on the uptrack switchbacks. I've certainly had worse days...