Stevens Peak

We toured up  Steven's peak today. Early in the morning skies were broken and snowfall was very light. At the beginning of the ascent the snow coverage in the trees was thin with very little new snow maybe 2 inches at best. Once we got  higher the snow totals increased  and so did the snowfall. Snowfall was persistent throughout the rest of the afternoon at an S - 1 rate not accumulating too much. Once we got above 8300 feet and moved to a northeast aspect we could find signs of wind slab formation. As we continued to climb and got up to 8900 feet we observed a wind slab release that appeared to be remotely triggered from a passing by skier or snowboarder? I could see a ski track adjacent to the avalanche, but not sure when it occurred? Could've been yesterday or today, but was obviously new. The crown was filled in with blown in snow ( see details in avalanche report). As we got near the summit,  we could see wind textured snow up high along the ridge line in above tree line terrain, surprisingly, there was no cornice development above us. Snow depths were now up to 10 inches in this area above 9000 feet. The descent made for good skiing pretty much all the way to the car just got thin as we got down to the bottom.

Wind slab development and cracking.