Kratka Ridge to Mt. Waterman "the crust tour"

Another drought snow year locally, but a recent spring storm dropped a couple feet of snow enough to allow this tour. The early indian summer weather made the conditions interesting. The participants included David "Corinthian Leather" Baron, Don Ralphs, Jim Valensi, Mike Rector, myself as lead, and Tom Marsh co-leader. We all rendezvoused at the La Canada meeting point at the bottom of the 2 for our carpool. An indication of the day's conditions, at 8 am it was about 65 degrees. We grouped into two cars, the skis, packs and Mike and Tom, in Tom's truck, while the rest of us luxuriated in the Corinthian Leather seats of David's Jaguar. As Hank Jr. played on the radio we headed up the Angeles Crest and parked at the Kratka Ridge parking lot. Since the base area at Kratka burned down a few years ago (probably an insurance collection scam), its now the unofficial Southern California Region SMS training center. On the 700' ascent to the top of Kratka ridge the firm corn snow was misleading. At the top we headed west, traversing the crest into the day long all you can eat serving of breakable crust on top of 12" of rotten depth hoar. After an hour of hop turns and face plants we made our way around the manzanita bushes and wound up at a drainage almost at the highway and ran into a family playing in the snow.