Some good turns before the deep freeze

After a few days of strong southwest wind, expectations for snow quality were not that high. We were pleasantly surprised to find 5 10cm of new snow from Thursday night that had not been blown away in a few sheltered spots in the alpine. The new snow was sitting on a variety of stiffer wind slab from earlier this week, or on hard (even icy) surface. Significant wind transport from north winds was occuring at ridge top. Snow was bonding surprisingly well to old surfaces as we were not able to get anything to move with ski cuts even in windloaded start zones. Snow conditions closer to the highway and at lower elevations were very different with extensive wind scouring observed, making for pretty bad conditions.