Observation: Duke Bowl

It was my first day up to Duke today and I was able to get up without getting stuck once. The snow was surprisingly supportive. I suspect all the warm weather has something to do with that.That is the ground is warm and so is the air so the facets have not had as much of a chance to grow as they typically do. There was quite a bit of green housing effect today keeping the temps warm again. The high elevation tress are rimed, there is wide spread surface hoar development on the ridgelines and suncrusts on the south side of the compass. I dug in a high elevation low angle NW slope and wasn't able to get any propagation in my snow stability tests however my compression tests were failing easily on the new snow old snow interface with resistant planar fractures. The snow pack is thin and facets are growing.