Just back from 5 days in the Catamount/Northstar Glaciers area.
Weather was quite unsettled with major Thunder/Lightening/Rain storm on the
night of July 9 that finished off with a dusting of wet snow down to 8500ft.
and another rain event (sans lightening) overnight on July 12 and still
raining lightly at 8500ft. (a light dusting of snow above 9,000 ft.) when we
left on the morning of July 13th - temp was 2.0 C.
Snow has retreated to just above the lower tongue of the glacier so not lots
of obvious crevasses yet but snowcover is quite shallow and changing
quickly.
No new avalanche activity was observed even with all the rain - some places
the surface snow was deep enough and saturated enough with water to start
small sluffs but the pockets we encountered were small and isolated - most
snow was firm with ankle deep penetration - July 10th is the only night we
had freeze,.
It was handy to have the skis for our returns home and the soft snow made
the suncups tolerable - it is a fun area with many nice summits and a
variety of snow and rock mountaineering objectives on granite.
Cheers,
Scott Davis
Mountain Guide
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