Quick report
Toured up Manitoba via standard route. Lots of fresh low density snow from Thursday night storm, 30+ cm at the road. Weather was favorable, mostly clear for the day with light winds and temps a few degrees below freezing. Around 1:00p up in the alpine there was some snow flurries that moved in for a bit, bringing reduced visibility and winds gusting to moderate. Not any accumulation to speak of during the flurries, but clearly abundant surface snow available for transport even with the light/moderate winds. Informal pole probing indicated HS of 120-150+cm throughout the alpine, with 60+cm of unconsolidated F hardness snow over a melt-y crust. A couple other groups out in the area who performed substantial pits and pit profiles and could verify more accurate measurements. I poked at an interesting feature that I believe to be a glide crack that opened and released but didn't really slide, and was since filled in with blowing snow. It was on a small convexity slightly more SW aspect than the main W face, at 2,875' and the crack release slope angle was 29*. As we approached I thought it was a small slab avalanche, but it looked funny and I when I dug around at the headwall I don't think that interpretation holds up, mostly because the "headwall" crack went to the ground and the whole feature had a more clear frowny face shape when viewed from the side. Performed a quick compression test at the top of the crack and had a result of CT21 on a layer approx. 30cm from the ground. Easy progressive compression through all the hand and elbow taps of that top 60+cm of unconsolidated snow. All photos below are from this feature.