Willow Creek

We traveled around the Willow Creek area today. Upon our arrival surface conditions were frozen over with melt freeze crusts on all elevations and aspects up to 9000' to start the day.  
We decided to splitboard up a N aspect in hopes to catch some cold snow.  At 9500'  I dug a hasty pit to see the depth of the near surface facets, There is approximately 8 to 10 inches of well developed faceted crystals at this elevation and above. Throughout the day in all of our travels up to this elevation, I did not see any surface hoar left after the recent warming event the last couple of days. Later in the afternoon, we rode some solar aspects and surface conditions definitely softened up with  3 to 4 inch ski pen on the snowmobiles making for enjoyable conditions. Traveling on both shaded and solar aspects today we did not produce any signs of instability while riding either snowboards or snowmobiles.