Crystal Ridge

Took the skis for a hike up Crystal ridge to check on conditions. With the reports of touchy conditions and wide propagations, we managed terrain carefully to keep away from steep slopes or overhead hazard. Travel conditions pretty good, easy trail breaking with 10-20cm ski pen. Good ski quality, breakable crust forming on open solar aspects at treeline and below. Found storm snow settling into ~4F slab 40-50cm deep on top of Mar 3 crust, very weak facets beneath. Dug test pit in open trees at 2180m on 26° SW asp. HS 110, top 10cm F, then 4F-1F slab down to 66cm where a laminated crust complex was found. Weak sugary F-4F facets and depth hoar below interspersed with the occasional crust. We did 3 compression tests to see how the new snow is bonding to the crust but every test broke after 4-12 taps at the saw in the facets below the crust instead of at the crust as we expected.