What a pleasant surprise!

Today we went into the southern Whitefish Range to track storm totals and assess buried weak layers. New snow stacked up deep as we gained elevation. 

• New snow piled up 12 to 16 inches above 5000' by mid-afternoon.
• During the ascent, we noticed very localized cracking within the storm snow approximately 4 inches below the surface.
• New snow is sitting on a hard, thick crust on south aspects and a brittle crust on north aspects at upper elevation.
• We stepped out into steep terrain on a southeast aspect and ended up triggering two storm slabs that propagated roughly 50 feet wide and ran roughly 500 vertical feet.
• During the descent, we both commented how the snow felt slabbier further down the slope. A ski cut produced no results at around 6800 ft, while slabs were reactive at roughly 6500'. 
• At roughly 5000' feet, we drove through a window of touchy conditions. We were able to remotely trigger thin, yet wide storm slabs. Harmless in size, but maybe a glimpse of what is yet to come with a thickening slab.

We felt comfortable riding steep, south-facing terrain where we were confident that we were not able to trigger a weak layer further down. The small storm slabs we triggered were on steep convexities at roughly 6500'. I anticipate with increasing sensitivity and continued precip rates that we hit the window of opportunity for steep storm skiing. Late afternoon or tomorrow might be a different story with a thickening slab.