Quick report
Arrived at Paradise and started skinning up around 10 am Sunday (2/18). The snow leading up to the bottom of Pano Face seemed to be consolidating well and fairly non-reactive with the heavier PNW snow. Visibility was not great overall. Started heading up Pano Face a little after 11am. We couldn't see the top of the face due to the poor visibility. The snow at the had some deeper spots, but the snow was fairly non-reactive near the bottom. The snow seemed to get lighter and half way up the face. Around 6,600', after doing a kick-turn and taking a couple of steps, there was a crack that propagated downhill for a foot or two with a small slab shifting down. Since we couldn't see how big these unconsolidated wind-loaded pockets of snow were, we decided to back-track to the last turn and head into the trees on the the climber's right ridge. The party ahead of us and the following parties also decided to stop here. One party tried going around to the summer trail and up to Camp Muir, but turned around fairly quickly due to the white-out conditions. The snow was nice, but flat lighting and poor visibility led to more survival skiing at times and more conservative choices for the day. We chatted with a couple other groups and they were taking things conservatively as well and not dropping into things we didn't skin up already. Things started warming up after 1pm and the falling snow was definitely wetter.