Quick report
I toured from around 5,200' to 6,700' with about 7-8" of soft new snow underfoot. The temps were cool with fog, no wind and light snow most of the day. The "partial sunshine" from NOAA turned out to be about 10 minutes of sunny glory around noon. That's ok, as it kept the snow soft all day. I jumped on many convex rolls on my way up, and while they did fracture, they held in place and didn't propogate. Hand shears found layers in the upper pack, but they were bonding. I dug a pit at about 6,400', West facing slope. CT8 @7" ; CT24@16". The concern layer would be at 16" as there is about 1/4"-1/2" of graupel/hail sitting there not bonding at all. (photo) The shear was not clean, but it seemed to have some energy when it popped. I could not get it to react while skiing or touring, but it is a layer not to be trusted. Sleds and snowbikes in particular, should be wary of this layer. Find it and check it out in your location because, obviously, this would be a lot of snow to start moving. I turned away from my East-facing objective due to the visibility and the loading that looked to have happened earlier in the storm. Also, during the sunny moments I could see some rather large sluffs on East-facing slopes nearby that were point releases from tree bombs. All in all a great ski day, skiing W and W NW aspects in the trees.