Quick report
I found about 15 inches (35-40cm) of low density new snow from the recent storm. This snow had bonded well to the underlying 3/8 crust. While wind affected snow was easy to find along ridges and exposed features, the resulting wind slabs were generally small, soft, and hard to trigger. That said, I still actively avoided several wind loaded slopes. The 3/8 crust is burly! Even though it’s only 3-4 inches thick, it was fully boor supportable and in some cases you could see solid ice. I dug a snow profile in a location where I’ve been monitoring the recent persistent weak layers. Interestingly, water didn’t make it to these layers and I was still able to find buried surface hoar (2/13) and facets (2/7). Other than right next to the new crust , the snowpack remains remarkably dry. The big surprise for the day was the blue sky and sunshine. The only rollerballs I saw were at lower than elevations, but a new crust was already forming on southerly aspects.
Avalanche
There were several natural cornice collapses from last night along the Hogback Mt ridge. I was also able to intentionally trigger a few small soft wind slabs and cornices. These slides were all D1s and didn’t propagate very widely.