Here is a collection of the various snow conditions around the Pass, weekend May 10 to 11, 2008

Coke Chute: May 10, fins in the couloir, apron and lower slopes ok skiing

Powerhouse: May 11, cold and windy Sunday, cloud over the Dana Plateau and high winds made for frozen snow.

False White: Saturday: sloppy skiing in afternoon, slope looks like the Face of 3 at Mammoth Mountain due to concentrated skier use.

Somewhere along False White/White Mtn; good skiing in couloirs, soft snow mid day, no sluffs in steep terrain.

Ridge between Gaylor and False White. Decent skiing, no fins, some sluffing in steep rollovers.

Many thanks to Andrew Lewicky of SierraDescents.com for his account and photos of a ski descent off Mt. Williamson.

Yesterday I skied the south-facing couloir between Mt. Williamson's east and west horns, accessed via the Bairs Creek Cirque.

I had hoped that the snow in the couloir would be somewhat smooth, given all the radiation it receives. I didn't expect conditions in the Cirque to be any good.

The opposite proved to be true: the cirque and headwall couloir, while hardly great, offered enough patches of smooth snow here and there to make skiing possible (though you'd have to be a maniac to climb lower Bairs approach to get to it).

South facing aspects, including the horn couloir-south, were abominable, with mature shark fins up to 3' deep.

To ski it, I kind of improvised a technique of finding the berm of a runnel, and riding the berm down kind of like a kid at a terrain park. I think this concludes my ski season -- good riddance to those sun cups and fins!!