Alpental Valley - Wright Mountain

New snow over the Early February Crust has certainly improved travel conditions, but wasn't enough to remove all challenges. In addition to the lovely, new, low density snow, we found plenty of open creeks, barely-covered avalanche debris, and slick, dust-on-crust skinning.  As slopes got sunshine throughout the day the new snow turned damp and sticky and started to rollerball lightly. Shaded aspects stayed soft and dry throughout the day. As we exited in the afternoon, slopes which had seen sun but became shaded had a breakable crust. We noticed some wind affect in exposed terrain around 5000', but did not encounter any cohesive slabs. Other than a small dry loose slide in the unconsolidated snow, and small rollerballs, we did not encounter any avalanche activity or signs of instability. 

Above the Early February Crust, on solar aspects we observed 2-3in of wet, crusty snow from earier in the week, capped by 5-6in of low density snow from overnight. On shaded aspects the 2-3in of snow from earlier in the week was slightly denser than last night's snow, but did not have a crust like on solar aspects.  The Early February Crust was also slightly slicker on shaded aspects, and when I investigated more intentionally on a N aspect around 4600', I found some faceted snow sitting above the crust.