Quick report
Toured up to Dogleg via Crystal Resort to see if any soft snow remained in the shaded aspects. I was pleasantly surprised to find packed powder, sugary snow, and a rippable zipper crust on NW-NE aspects at all but the lowest elevations. The caveat being that the warmup last week deposited many tree bombs and frozen chunder balls anywhere below trees, cliffs, or steep slopes under cornices. As a result, the Dogleg chute itself was survival skiing, as was skiing through trees. You have to be looking for very specific slopes and the travel to and from them may be challenging, but there is still good skiing out there! As for avalanche concerns, I did not observe any signs of instability however is was clear that the upper 30cms of snow is weakening. I found faceted snow or surface hoar on the surface pretty much everywhere that is exposed to the sky and shaded. I also dug a pit and found weakening snow throughout the upper 30cms, above and below multiple crusts. Most notably, I observed a settled slab and a poor bond between the 1/10 crust and the most recent 4-6” of snow on top of it. This layer was down about 15cm and produced a CT6 Q2 and an ECTN12. There was another crust down about 30cms that failed at CT17 Q1. All of these failed on very small (0.5-1mm) faceting DF. The lack of propagation on either layer was a good sign, however I think the bigger story is the weakening surface and what that means whenever we get snow again!