Blowin' Lower Than Expected

Spent the morning of my day off playing in a snow pit at a 4500' study plot and the afternoon skiing a low-angled knob just above the Skyland trailhead.

• Very light snow showers in the morning gave way to patches of blue sky mid-day. Calm winds on the canyon floor, but we saw blowing snow across ridgelines.
• Mixed stability test results in our study pit. 1 foot thick, soft slab over large facets and depth hoar above and below the mid-January crust. Nothing happened in our extended column test, but our propagation saw test indicated instability in the weak snow above the crust.
• Winds increased as we drove east toward Marias Pass. Continuous moderate blowing snow and moderate winds at the highway and to our high point of 6,000 feet. Windward slopes were pencil hard sastrugi. Leeward slopes had a mix of older, stiffer, stubborn wind slabs and developing, soft, reactive drifts. We got frequent shooting cracks and collapses in these newer slabs on low-angled terrain. We walked past a few cornices that broke without us even stomping on them. We didn't see any natural avalanches and we didn't trigger any because we were skiing slopes around 30 degrees or less. In the sheltered terrain we skied, there was 1-2 feet of low density snow and facets above the crust.
• Some deeper, rumbling collapses from buried persistent weak layers.
• On my drive home snowfall and winds increased. Moderate showers and blowing snow visible at the highway level and mid-elevations (peaks obscured). The weather calmed with showers tapering and visible blowing snow becoming patchy and isolate the further northwest I drove. Snowfall was very light and showery once I passed Paola Creek. Blowing snow at mid-elevations was almost non-exisitent once I passed Rescue Creek.