The multi-foot storm of the past few days had settled out and like other areas, the new snow in Mineral Fork consists of a settled 2 feet or so of dense snow topped with 6 inches of light powder. At least that is how it was at the start of our tour. Lowering clouds and very light snowfall in the morning transitioned to fog and drizzle by noon on Saturday. The snow surface became damp and cake-like as the day progressed. The temperatures were rising all day. I'm calling it drizzle rather than rime, because it didn't seem to be freezing to anything. Our goggles were just coated in raindrops. The snow continued to be good skiing, but I wonder if a rain crust will form when skies clear and temperatures drop. The snow in lower Mineral Fork at the end of the day was very wet as the temperatures were in the upper 30s at the BCC road.

The snow depth at 7500-8000' has increased considerably in the last 2 weeks and about 60" of snow exists near 8k in Mineral Fork with probably closer to 80" at 9k. Hasty pits along the skin track going up Moonlight indicate layers of weak snow persist, with the weakest snow at the lower portion of the slope, but there was still quite a bit of weak snow to our high point of 9200'. Although we were skiing mostly lower angle slopes, we did ski check and ski a number of steep convex roll-overs without seeing any cracking or settlement. Even though the snowpack in this area is still weak, we saw no activity of any kind today. We did see some hints of old avalanche debris in the runout zones below the steep terrain coming off Santiago Ridge into Moonlight, but it was mostly buried by the new snow and did not appear to have run very far down the slope.