Calm before the storm

We toured into the Lake McDonald area to observe surface conditions and venture into a new basin. We planned to go up a large, west-facing bowl. We took a detour to more northerly facing terrain to avoid a breakable sun crust that existed on solar aspects. 

• The cloud ceiling dropped around noon, which gave way to brief periods of light rain, freezing rain, and rime. 
• Surfaces formed a thin zipper crust that you could hear, but not feel while riding. 
• Above roughly 6500' we found 2 to 4-inch hard wind slabs on cross-loaded terrain features. These were unreactive and only produced minor cracking.
• We dug a pit on a northwest-facing aspect at 6000 feet. We had non-propagating results with hard force on a layer of buried graupel. 

With no signs of instability and no recent avalanches, we felt comfortable skiing very steep terrain.