Quick report
Accessed Grayback Ridge via Little Greys road. Overall shallow snowpack below 9,000'. Snow depth varied from 60-130cm (24-50"). Snow surfaces varied from sheltered powder (near surface facets), crusts, and wind packed snow. Stout crust on southerlies buried a few inches before cold snap of weather. Near surface faceting on northerly aspects. No recent avalanches or collapsing. We did not travel in much wind affected terrain, but visible clues were seen around 9,000' on ridgelines where I'll bet you could find shooting cracks and shallow,touchy wind slabs. Mostly clear skies with cold temperatures gradually increasing throughout the day. We found no unstable results in our stability tests (See Snowpack section). A couple weak layers are formed in the upper snowpack that will likely be a concern in the future. Just gotta wait for more snow and a slab to form....
Snowpack
We found weak snowpack structure throughout our travels, but despite the poor structure we found no unstable results in snowpits. Below 7500' little to no snow was present in this area during drought conditions in December (and thus lack persistent weak layers). We dug two pits in the middle elevations containing a shallow snowpack:
8100' W aspect HS:114cm ECTX no propagation on Dec drought layer buried 80cm (1mm dry facets).
8700' N aspect HS: 120cm ECTX, PST 55/120 on Dec drought layer buried 90cm (1-2mm dry facets).
These weak layers appear to be gaining strength over time as the overlying slab is hard (1F) across most elevations. The deeper the slab, the harder it is to trigger. Areas with a shallow snowpack remain skeptical, especially when conditions change down the road during rapid warming or loading of snow.