Hiked then skinned up to a high point of 6000' to see what our 01" of rain in the valley yesterday looked like in the mountains. Well, it looked a lot like rain up to 4500', but above that, up to 5000' there was an increasing layer of new wet snow (up to 2") over a soft crust.
Above 5000', W and SW aspects had wind scoured areas interspersed with smooth and supportable wind deposites. Some snow was still available for transport by the Moderate SW winds but most of the deed had been done.
A sheltered WNW aspect provided several inches of well behaved snow but was very close to getting grabby. Snow still in the trees. Featureless snow surface.
There were few signs of instability. Localized shallow cracking was observed occasionally around the skis and some longer cracks when traveling above the skin track. A CT5 in a pit dug near 6000' and on a WNW aspect failed on an invisible density discontinuity between the older and newly deposited snow, both of which were F and had yet to slab up. No propagation of this fracture was observed in multiple tests (ECTN5).
