Overcast skies in the morning slowly transitioned to blue-bird conditions by 10:00. Temps remained below freezing all day.
Hiked to ~4500' then was able to transition to skies. Snow pack between 4500' and 5000' consisted of a boot supportable (K)nife hard crust (~10cm thick) topped with from 1-3 inches of dry F snow. Below the crust was a 1F D-M mass of large rounded grains. HS 50-60cm.
The consistent feature between 5000' and 6000' was a (K)nife hard crust over a (P)encil to 1F hard slab to the ground. Could barely punch the ski pole handle through it in many places.
The new snow above this base depended greatly on aspect and small scale wind exposure:
On SW to W aspects the surface snow varied from wind scour to 2-4 inches of smooth deposits of wind blown snow. Surface snow bonded poorly to the underlying crust but had enough density to hold an edge (most of the time).
On a wind sheltered NW aspect there was a consistent 6-8" of dry (F)ist hard snow.. This surface of partially faceted grains had not sintered a slab and sluffs slid VERY easily on a slippery supporting crust. (say that 10 times fast). Sluffs did not travel any distance on slope angles <35 deg. Was glad however that temps were well below freezing.
We seem to have avoided much of the dry and wet avalanche mayhem in our little part of the forecast region. Nothing seen up close today nor recently from down in the valley..
