Van Trump November leftovers

Seduced by a report of corn snow on Van Trump glacier, I and alpinedad headed up to investigate on a this fine November Sunday.  I usually come this way in spring and encounter skinnable snow anywhere from 4500 to 5000 feet elevation.  Today, to our disappointment, inconsistent skinning started from about 5500 and we had to fight our way through the rotten snow up the steep ridge to the knoll where the snowfields really open up at around 7000 feet; only above this point we could start the uninterrupted skinning.  Soon it was time to rip the skins off and head down on runneled corn which turned out to be amazingly fast.  Back down at the car, we congratulated ourselves for surviving another epic day in the mountains when ski to hike ratio approaches negative value (weighted by a fun factor).