The calm before the storm?

We toured on Mt. Brown today to look for old wind slabs, investigate old buried weak layers, see any new blowing snow, and to check in on how today's new snow is bonding to the old snow surfaces.

• We did not find any blowing snow. Winds remained calm our entire tour. The new snow that fell remained light, soft, and did not yet have any slab characteristics. 2 to 3 inches of new snow accumulated during our 5 hour tour.
• Once we reached the mid and upper elevations, we did find evidence of previous winds in the form of firm wind-packed surfaces, wind-scoured surfaces, old hard wind slabs, and punchy wind crusts. The 2 to 3 inches of new snow combined with flat lighting made seeing these wind features before your skis hit them challenging. Wind effects existed on W-SW-S-SE-E aspects in exposed areas. We ruled out consequential terrain that might have both difficult snow conditions and potential old wind slabs and found a reasonable path down on the S side of the mountain.
• The old snow surfaces have gotten weaker during the cold spell and the new snow did not want to bond to them. Ski cuts on steep slopes caused the new snow sluff off of the old snow surfaces. 
• Snow quality improved greatly as we descended. Once we got into sheltered terrain below ~6200', we found soft, light, consistent snow from that elevation down
• Snowpit tests targetting the old weak snow around the 2/2 crust support the idea that that weak layer has gone dormant for now (ECTN's with some PSTs showing potential propagation). It still bears watching for future loading events.