Weather
Above freezing temperatures with few to scattered cloud coverage throughout the afternoon. It felt like a warm April day out there today.
Snowpack
Snow surfaces near and below treeline on shady slopes were composed of 10-15cm of near-surface facets (FCsf) and lacked any cohesion. Above about 10,500 feet there was still a cohesive slab 20-30cm thick that showed surprisingly little signs of faceting and was supportable to skis but not boots (Ski Pen was about 10-15cm boot pen to the ground) The snow surface on all sunny slopes was wet to very wet throughout the day and refreezing into a melt-freeze crust by around 16:00 when slopes started losing direct sunlight. I got several terrain feature collapses and associated cracking on shady, south-facing slopes between 10,500-11,000 ft where the snowpack was 50-60cm deep and had well-developed facets at the base. As soon as I moved out of the shade on the same slope there was no more collapsing or cracking. Just below the ridgeline of Arkansas on the north side, snow surfaces are a mix of 1F hard (on the hand hardness scale) wind-packed rounds or FCsf and HS averaged 70-90cm, with the same two distinct layers, weak facets at the base, and a cohesive slab making up the top 2/3 of the snowpack. Snowpack tests showed largely unstable results on east and north-facing slopes above 11,000 ft with extended column tests failing on with easy to moderate taps and propagation saw tests consistently showing propagation after cutting about 20% of the column.
Avalanche
Observed some old avalanches from the natural cycle last weekend and walked adjacent to a number of avalanche paths and tests slopes and nothing slid.