Moosh in the booosh

Traveled to Marias Pass area to check out the effects of Tuesday's wraparound storm. We climbed to about 6100 feet; no obs from obove there due to poor visibility.

• The storm dropped 6-16" (2+" SWE) of moist. dense snow near the Continental Divide. Snow totals tapered off rapidly west of the pass, though it looked like snow fell above ~5600 feet near Essex.
• The storm wasn't accompanied by much wind. We saw no signs of drifted or blowing snow. Of course, it would have taken a spatula to move this storm snow.
• We found ~1/2 dozen natural wet loose slides that ran on steep (~40 degrees) creekbanks. Stomping around on short test slopes confirmed that it would be easy to trigger wet loose slides that would entrain significant debris. Near 5000 feet, they could gouge into the wet melt freeze grains below the storm snow, making them more dangerous.
• Below the storm snow is a 1-5 cm thick refrozen crust of melt freeze grains or rain crust. We could pry the storm snow off at the interface ( planar shear) but it did not fail in stability tests.
• The snow below the old/ new snow interface is moist rounds and refrozen percolation tubes on northerly slopes, or mushy soft melt-freeze grains.
• What we saw suggests storm slabs 6-18" thick might exist at upper elevations (above 7000 feet?) where the storm dropped dry snow. 

Skiing was tips-up,  wide feet to let the wedge of snow pass between your boots.