Muir Snowfield

On this sunny New Years Eve I had to come up and see what the snow was like.  With 12,000 foot freezing level and light wind I expected warm, and got it in the air but not so much underfoot  The snow started out crunchy such that having ski crampons made the difference to making reliable ascension.  Above Panorama Point, where everyone booted, there were still a lot of rocks as shown in the picture.  All the way to Muir there were just a few exposed icy bits, otherwise thin cold snow on top of hard.  With low hazard and light pack I made good time, 3:50 for an old guy. The ski down was occasional sastrugi to turnable thin powder so got a rating of moderate difficulty.  I had to carry a couple times to get through the rocks.  The hardest part was the last few hundred feet above the parking lot as it was so frozen chopped up bumps from snowshoers and whatnot.  The rangers were using their sirens and PA to announce the lot was closed, move along now from 3pm on.  All around a fine way to spend a day.