#NotPowder

We needed to know how high this crust goes, so crunched our way up Mt. Brown to find out.

• The crust goes to 7,000' where it's replaced by stiff, dry, wind-affected snow. It's thinner, and more breakable where we traveled than other people have seen it elsewhere. Underneath it there's about 8 inches of light, soft, low-density, totally wasted powder. Above 6,000', there are isolated areas with trace to 1/2" of light new snow on top of the crust.
• Above where the crust petered out, we dug a test pit on a sheltered, northeast facing slope at 7,300' where we found a layer of well presreved surface hoar under a 1' thick soft slab. We got 2 ECTNs and 1 ECTP on that layer. I suspect it will be a real problem where, or when, it is covered by a stiffer slab.
• Low visibility and time constraints limited our experience with wind slabs. The one test slope we stomped on had hard, stubborn slabs about 6" thick that only cracked a few feet around our skis.
• Before we ascended into the Brown cloud, we could see large, muddy debris piles in the southwest facing cutes on Mt. Stanton. These likely ran overnight Tuesday or early Wednesday morning during the rain.
• We saw no other signs of instability where we traveled, but the nasty, breakable crust made us take very low angled terrain very slowly back down the hill. FYI, the trail is downright dangerous with ice below about 4,000'.