Alpental Valley

We spent the day trying to cover a wide variety of terrain, features, and aspects in the Alpental Valley. While we didn't find any wind affect, we did encounter some lingering weak storm layers. However, despite our best efforts, we couldn't get it to fail or produce small slides on test slopes. The new snow over the Jan 3 crust was soft and smooth at middle elevations, and a bit heavy and thick lower in the terrain. 

No cracking or collapsing was noted

The recent snow really improved conditions at the Pass! Travel in and out of the Valley is still thin and littered with bushes, small christmas trees, and random holes, but it's not too bad. 

Mid/Upper Elevations: There was a noticeable lack of wind effect on the recent snow. In fact, we didn't see any at all. Instead we found a consistent interstorm layer about 12 inches (30cm) below the surface. While this layer would fail in tilt and compression test, numerous small slope tests and a few larger column tests (ECTs) didn't produce any results. Maybe it would have released in extremely steep and unsuppoted terrain, but we weren't willing to try it. 
We found 13-16inches (35-40cm) of storm snow over the 1/3 crust. The new crust was relatively soft and breakable. Below the snowpack appears strong and well settled. 

Lower Elevations: The snow was much heavier below 4000ft. We didn't see any new rollerballs or wet loose slides, but snow, it would surprise me. New Source Lake (3800ft) about 8-10 inches (20-25cm) of snow sat above the very stout freezing rain ice crust, closer to Pass level that dropped to about 4-6 inches (10-15cm). Unlike the softer Jan 3 crust, up higher, the ice crust was very noticable below the new snow.