Felt like winter

Toured into the sidecountry east of WMR to look for recently-formed weak layers under the most recent snow, wind-drifted snow, and the lingering Persistent Slab problem.

• Very light snow through the afternoon, with 1-5" of very low-density snow over the past two days. 
• The previous snow surfaces include 1-2" melt-freeze crusts on sunny slopes (SE-S-SW aspects) and small, near-surface facets. Did not find any surface hoar in hand pits in the terrain we surveyed. 
• We triggered a few small, harmless sluffs on slopes steeper than 35 degrees. These didn't run far or entrain much snow. 
• We found no signs of drifted snow n the generally sheltered terrain where we toured. 
• The 11/19 crusts/ facets did not fail in a large column test, but did fail (break) in a deep tap test (most of slab removed). The slab above this combination is 1-finger hard, and the grains above the crust are rounding. 
• We did not find any well-developed facted layers above the crust. Some small faceted grains exist just below the new snow, and make for difficult skinning. They are small and don't show much angularity. 

With no signs of instability and few obvious weak layers in the snowpack, we felt comfortable skiing open, planar slopes up to 35 degrees, along with short steep pitches with consequences.