The road was generally snow free all the way to the rec site parking lot and while some might argue that what we did was skinning , we did skin right from the car. We took the high route through the cut block and through the forest because it would " save time ". It didn't. We trashed through thin cover until we reached the meadows, eventually. Once in the alpine it was obvious that there had recently been a rain event follow by below freezing temperatures. Normally this would be a major bummer but when it's October and the snow pack is 50cm or less this is freaking awesome. The crust was super dooper sportive and was covered in large surface hoar crystals. This meant we could ski anything that was snow covered without worrying about rocks and that meant no boring glacier today!