Quick report
“You can tell it’s a big ol wind slab by the way it is.” We headed up to Comeau Pass in search of some soft snow and a deeper snowpack. The Sperry trail is largely bare or with modest, faceted accumulations for a long ways. Surface hoar present. We switched to skis around 6k ft. One of our primary concerns was solar input on the south facing slopes of Mt Edwards, which carry far more potential than you can see while under them. While we did see some minimal rollerball action, it never warmed enough during the day to initiate any kind of loose wet problem although one small slide had done this at some point in the past and reached the summer trail in the basin above the chalet. All slopes we traveled on had some form of crust. SW aspects this from solar melt and refreeze and it wasn’t much fun to ski. Wind had transported some soft snow into harder lenses with varying distribution atop this crust in the areas above 6500ft. Primary direction for this west of the pass was from the SW, while we found the opposite east of Comeau Pass. These lenses could be over a foot thick in places. We steered clear of the larger ones on the face. At upper elevations (above 8500ft) on north aspects we found a hard, rimed crust that was supportive of body weight and highly textured. The big takeaway for me from a snowpack standpoint: every one of the current snow surfaces we saw can be a culprit once it gets buried and loaded in the next or subsequent storms. We saw light N winds at the pass and glacier basin. Skies above the inversion were clear. No transport of snow was observed.