Still Some Dry Snow

We didn't start at the crack of dawn today, so we chose to ride a north aspect and avoid trying to race the heat.

• In the morning we found dry, faceted snow above 5,500 feet in open areas. Below that elevation, and in the trees, there was a supportable melt-freeze crust from previous days.
• When we ran out of supportable crust on north-facing terrain, we dug to check on what the late January weak layers are doing. We found the layer of facets down 4 feet deep under a hard slab of settled snow. We didn't get any extended column results in our tests, only small column tests broke on that layer.
• We found a few inches of wet snow on southeast and south aspects above treeline when we arrived at upper elevations around noon. We saw some fresh roller balls coming from rocks on a nearby slope and massive carnage on the south-facing side of the next ridge where we saw 7 glide cracks, many recent wet loose avalanches, and a recent large slab avalanche. We speculated that the avalanches could have failed on Sunday the 14th, which was the most recent hot day. 
• We dug to look at the persistent weak layers on a south-facing slope and found that, under the wet snow, there's a 6 inch thick melt-freeze crust and a 4 foot thick hard slab above the facets. Seems like it would take a very large trigger, or a very shallow spot, to be able to affect that layer on sunny slopes.
• We kicked some test cornices, which were stubborn to our best stomping, but I still wouldn't venture above or below large cornices looming on hot sunny ridgelines.
• We skied cold winter snow on north-facing slopes in the afternoon until we dropped below the upper elevation band. By 6,300 feet the snow was transitioning and sticky. By 5,700 feet the surface was wet. We only saw small roller balls and didn't trigger any wet loose avalanches on the steep rollers we tested on the way down.