Balu Pass environs

Lovely Christmas Day around Balu Pass. We were surprised by the top 2-3 inches of snow texture which was wind affected and even felt a bit crusty. Ski conditions were still good but much different than the last few days of bottomless blower. Skinning up the Connaught Creek valley we saw a size 2 avalanche on STS that appears to have run between 12/24-12/25. The slide started ~100m below the cornice on climber's left of the ski line and ran full path. The crown did not appear to be overly deep but entrained a lot of snow. We got some isolated cracking on southwest aspects on kick-turn corners but other than that did not experience instability in our runs. We dug a hasty pit around 1m down and found a generally rightside up snowpack, with F hardness in the top 15 cm progressing to 4F for the next 30cm or so. We did not perform a proper pit or snow profile. Weather-wise, it was quite sunny for a majority of the day. Around 3PM it started to get cloudy and overcast. Near Balu Pass winds picked up around 2PM.