Observation: Silver Spoon

I toured up lower Silver Fork early this morning and observed several red flags which quickly got my attention. There was only about 2"-3" of new snow down low but it was obviously cracking while I broke trail up through the aspens. After reaching about 9,200 feet the snow was roughly 4-5" and continuing to crack along with increasing winds. At that point I decided I had no interest in seeing what the winds had done up higher close to the ridge and dug a quick pit just to see what the snow looked like. Shovel tilt tests resulted in clean shearing of the storm snow sliding on the consolidated somewhat sun affected crust underneath. I didn't do an ECT but easily got the storm snow to break and crack with little effort by pulling from behind the column. I rode back down through the aspens mostly following the skin track. Sorry for the crappy photo, the light was low and I didn't put much effort into it.