SummitPost.org

anything still in? Dead Dog or Emporer? anyone been up in the last few days?

thanks

I skied the Hawaii Couloirs off Pacific last Thursday. The basin is mostly dry until the last push to the N face of Pacific. Leave the skins. Skiing was fantastic. The N couloir had a deep runnel in it.
Then we climbed the Dead Dog last Friday. The snow starts at the bottom of the couloir. It is in fine climbing shape to the ridge. The runnels are forming up, and there are plenty of little rocks scattered around. A ski is still possible, but it would be a contrived line of descent getting around all the crap down there. We carried over the summit and skied from the saddle which was much, much better. That area looked awfully white after this last weather and reports from around the zone showed significant amounts of new snow in places. It won't stick around long with the heat, but winds up high today will be counter productive. Plenty left out there.

Climbed Dead Dog on the 20th. Snow is in good shape for climbing, we were in the couloir around 7 am. Lots of small rocks starting to show in the snow, but it's good for another few days i'd guess. Rockfall seemd to tend to funnel off to climbers left - so we stayed right. Runnells starting to form up, from my inexperienced skier's perspective, it would have been a gnarly ski descent.