The route up Purple bowl had been used by the avalanche patrol since Saturday. This actually made for a fairly nice, easy track all the way up to just below the tree line. We had a lunch at tree line and then headed up to Wolverine Ridge where there seemed to be lots of untouched snow.
Unfortunately there was some nice fresh snow on top of a fairly supportive crust, on top of a bunch of unconsolidated snow. So, we'd make a few nice turns and then suddenly break through. It was tiring to extract oneself from the sitzmark that resulted.
For our second (and last) run we skied up to the northeast side of the bowl below Unity Peak. This made for a nice tour of the whole bowl and the more gradual slope was a little easier to handle although the conditions were about the same.
Some of us were eager to be home before too late and so we headed down a little before 3:00. Even the slope leading up into the bowl provided us with significant challenges.
Many thanks to Bill, Jim, Peter and Terry for joining me, Carl (C/S).