Crust Bustin' and Facet Fishin'

We spent a beautiful, calm day in the Lake McDonald area to look at surface conditions and buried weak layers.

• We saw multiple small to large wet loose avalanches that ran during the last rain event on the 12th or during the solar warming on the 13th. These mostly ran in confined gullies on southwest aspects and initiated from mid-elevations. We were surprised at the lack of recent slab avalanche activity, but perhaps the crowns and debris of slides that ran early in the last storm were covered over. No new avalanches and no signs of instability today.
• We found the recent surface crust on all aspects we travelled. It still has the snowpack locked up tight. It was hardest and most supportable to skiing on steep south and southeast facing terrain. It was breaking down and thinner as we worked our way around onto shadier west and northwest facing slopes. It almost disappeared at our high point of 7400 feet where stiff windboard is the firm surface layer. This could the upper extent of the crust in this area, or it could be because we were on flatter terrain.
• Atop the crust, we found trace to 1 inch of new, low density snow. It consisted of some graupel and very large preserved stellars and hexagonal plates (big snowflakes). I would bet that this low density snow will facet easily on cold shady slopes. Sunshine today did not melt this layer at all.
• Immediately under the crust we found a layer of soft snow that's already faceting.
• We found thin, weak, faceted snowpacks in hasty pits on southeast and west-facing slopes at mid-elevations (around 5700 feet). There were several soft layers of sugary facets between harder layers of old snow, and a layer of moist, large facets at the ground in all of out pits. 
• We dug deep on a northeast aspect at 7400 feet - a similar aspect and elevation to the recently reported larger persistent slab avalanches in the Flathead Range - to look at the early December crust/facet combo. We got propagating results in a propagation saw test in the facets just above the crust. See snow profile.