Quick report
The mid-morning had thin high overcast (8/8) plus orographic clouds littered along more prominent terrain features. Wind was calm in sheltered basins and at or below 10 mph higher up. Horizontal visibility was generally good, but the light was just real flat all day. Light snow showers/snow began 12PM and by 3PM it was steady light-moderate snow. We were one of more than a few parties leaving HM lot toward Bagley Basin, en route to Herman Saddle and Iceberg areas in the morning. Before even getting to the creek, we wondered "what have we gotten ourselves into?!". As of 10AM, there was a solid crust, like the upper 4-5cm had gotten saturated before freezing sometime later. That crust was breakable after light stomping and underneath there was looser, moist, grain-like snow. Not pleasant to move through Bagley. Roller balls were seen on various aspects down low. Ascending through 4,300-4,500ft, the surface crust wore progressively thinner and the upper 5-6cm became drier and less dense. Still, you could find multiple layers of differing density in the upper 10-15 cm in a hand pit. At 4,500-5,000ft the upper snow seemed less consolidated for a stretch but up on the saddle, some firmness/wind effect was evident there. Small cornice features are present on the west side of the saddle/entrance to Iceberg areas. Skiing in the 4,800-5,600ft band was pleasant overall, but occasionally just "serviceable", due to flat light conditions. Below that, the crust remained a pain for travel. We gave the steep terrain above us a wide berth most of the time; we never encountered much instability under our feet, just some dry-ish sloughing here and there. People riding higher up than our top-out seemed to be pumped on it! There was a large slide debris field almost to the creek below Corner Pocket that we encountered on the descent/out. It was beginning to get covered with a few cm's of snow accumulation by early afternoon. From a distance it looked like some glide cracking below rock bands and cornice features hanging on north Table.