It was just a taste, but we didn't want to bite off more than we could chew

We kept to small, mid-elevation terrain in the Flathead Range today. We saw that wind was the key ingredient driving instability in the storm snow.

• Visibilty was poor, but we did manage to spot 3 natural avalanche that ran on steep, upper elevation slopes; probably this morning.
• We found about 10 inches of new snow at lower elevations and between 12 and 20 inches at middle elevations.
• We ski cut short, low consequnce, test slopes and found that the top-heavy storm snow was reactive where the wind had thickened it into soft slabs. Sheltered slopes produced only sluffing.
• We experienced 2 localized collapses in areas where the snowpack was shallower - near rocks. We dug a snow pit and found the wafer cookie of facets and crusts now buried under about 3 feet of total snow.
• We didn't get any propagating results in our test pit, but took the natural avalanches, collapses, and ski cut results as good reminders to stick to lower-angled, sheltered terrain.