Wet and heavy

Very challenging skiing conditions with waming temps turning our fluffy pow into knee deep mashed potatoes. Very heavy snow with high ski pen made for extremely difficult skiing. An inversion kept the valley bottom/lake cooler, though the snow depth there was insufficient for skiing. Aside from the warming, we also observed a buried wind crust from valley bottom to about 2000m. This crust was buried anywhere from 10-30 cm, and failed underfoot in some places at valley bottom, but seemed thinner and less dense at higher elevations. Under this crust we noticed a low density layer (fist) that appeared to have some faceting in a few isolated pockets.