Low danger, high fun

We spent the day exploring a new (to us) area near St Mary's lake. We skinned up a south facing, treed ridge to observe how the snow was reacting to the sunny conditions. Found the surface snow just becoming moist in steep, sheltered, due south features. But mostly the snow was dry. On the way up we felt some denser snow over the crust (down 50) from early February so we dug down and found the snow above bonding well and unreactive in our tests. There was light wind effect approaching ridge crest which contributed to the huge cornices at ridge top. We avoided any terrain with cornices overhead as the sun was hitting the backs of them all day.