Snow climbing in a year when the fridge started low

Refrigerator couloir Ice mountain

Snow climb of the Refrigerator couloir and Ice Mt. on Sun 2018/5/20. I car camped at the Huron TH on Saturday night to get an early start Sun am. My alarm was at 3am, I got going at 4:45 am (doh!), to reach the log bridge at 5:30 am; Apostle basin at 6:48 am; the base of the rock channel at 7:24; the top of the rock channel at 8:07; the kink in the snow route at 9:35; the top of the couloir at 10:50; and Ice Mt. summit at 11:27. I was back at my truck by 3:45 (11 hour outing). It snowed late Saturday afternoon 1-2 inches (low down, near the trailhead) giving 3-4 of snow up higher on the couloir. The base of the couloir was set up good (hard), although when plunging my ice ax i seemed to detect a second hard layer at least 12'' below the surface of the outer base layer. It was not a great day for skiing because the snow from the previous night had turned to 3" of mush by mid morning... there was no corn snow that day. I have found the ingress/egress (through the forest near treeline) particularly brutal this spring season. I was often post-holing waist deep for many steps, with snowshoes seeming to provide no benefit. In those stretches, it felt like 1.5 feet of snow on 1.5 feet of air. I suspect some of this follows from the limited snowfall this past winter season. Some may also follow from the limited number of truly hot days and really good freezes to better densify the snow. Skiers seemed to get better flotation than my snow shoes, sometimes preventing much post-holing. They instead found the risk of exposed objects including limitedly buried fallen trees. Post-holing may have added more than an hour round trip to this outing. Key waypoints include: the trailhead at N38.96040 W106.46086 at 10,594'; the log bridge over the creek at N38.93863 W106.45627 at 10,864'; the low end of Apostle basin at N38.92718 W106.45314 at 11,295'; the base of the rock channel at N38.92115 W106.44744 at 11,703'; the top of the rock channel at N38.91976 W106.44552 at 12,147'; i cached my snowshoes at N38.91857 W106.44021 at 12,751'; the bend in the snow route (start of the true couloir) at N38.91707 W106.43836 at 13,175'; the top of the couloir at N38.91502 W106.43760 at 13,883'; and Ice Mt. summit at N38.91499 W106.43706 at 13,979'. We traversed, descending slightly SE from the couloir top to a line of snow that ran up to Ice Mt. summit. The steepness of the snow sections includes 38 degrees (for the rock channel); 43 degrees (call it 45 degrees maximum, for the base of the couloir - then the angle stays relatively steady at that until the very near the top); 52 degrees (call it 55 degrees maximum, for the top of the couloir). There was a local overhanging cornice at the top of the couloir (see photos) that we circumvented by going to the climber's left. 

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