Outflowing Onion

Today we rode the Onion Snowmobile area. Last weeks outflow winds were not kind to the snowpack. Even the 20 cm of recent storm snow couldn't cover up the widespread wind waves and hard surfaces. There was even some cornice formation noted on SW aspects from all the outflow winds. Cornices due to conventional wind direction(from the SW), are looking large these days and we are almost into March when they could start to fail due to daytime warming and solar input. We dug at 1755 m on a SW aspect, the total snow depth was 155 cm. We found multiple layers of old windslab with one layer failing down 40 cm over small facets. Where we dug the base of the snowpack is comprised of 50cm facets(3mm). We're watching out for overhead hazards and avoiding steep shallow rocky start zones.