Echo Summit

I toured over Talking Mountain and down Flagpole today. On the Talking/Becker ridge this morning, the east wind was cold and moving snow. We saw several spots of wind slab on the south side of the ridge. While there was enough snow to travel on the south facing parts of this terrain today, the snow cover is thin and won't last long. We were impressed by the multiple large crowns visible in bowl between Becker and Talking. I estimate that these occurred during the middle or later parts of the storm. There are many cornices along this ridge and while we avoided the bigger ones we did kick some smaller ones without much results other than some soft snow breaking. We descended a less steep portion of Talking via a weakness in the cornices over this area. Once we started down Talking proper, we were able to see debris from what appeared to have been a previous cornice break just beyond were we entered the slope.  Once off the ridge, the snow in the near and below tree line terrain was high quality uncohesive powder. Ascending the south side of the Flagpole area was just barely doable. Once the recent snow melts, it will be difficult to ascend this area using skins. Dropping Flagpole around 2pm, all but the most north aspects were getting heavy due to the sun and warming temps. We came across what appeared to be a recent skier triggered slide (with tracks exiting) that was triggered from a steeper rocky area. This appeared to have been storm slab/wet slab hybrid problem.