Up the Silverhorn route today with one guest. As per Barry's post of
yesterday very warm overnight and 4 degrees at 2:30am. Below 9000 feet there was
little overnight recovery however above 9500 ft conditions improved dramatically
(at least from and avalanche perspective) and the snowpack had refrozen over
night. I estimate as much as 60cm of recent storm snow sits on top of the ice in
the 10,000 to 11,000 elevation band on the Silverhorn. Also there are multiple
breakable crusts layered in the snowpack making trail breaking a memorable
experience and these crusts will provide some weak gliding surfaces on the next
hot and sunny day....that would be a bad time to be on the north glacier
approach.Descent via the AA Col at 10:30 am today seemed a bit too late and the
snow pack was reacting to the intense solar radiation in between the cloudy
periods getting soft. We did not observe any avalanches today.
James Blench
UIAGM