Tenderfoot

We toured up Tenderfoot to look for buried surface hoar and check springtime surface conditions. The snowpack froze overnight, but the air temperature was 43 degrees F at the road when we started at 12:45pm so in the sun the surface was soft. Once we left the road and started climbing the surface was a 1" crust that was slippery in places. We rounded to the southwest side of the mountain at 2,000' and found the buried surface hoar about 1' down. It's size was 1" and it produced a moderate failure in hand pits. We found this buried surface hoar in several hand pits up to about 2,600'. We dug a snowpit at 2,930' on a north facing slope and did get concerning results (ECTP20, 1.5' down on facets below a crust). We did not find the surface hoar in this pit, which surprised me because we were about 20' from the crown of the human-triggered avalanche on March 3rd. We dug another snowpit at 3,100' on a southwest facing slope. We did not find the buried surface hoar and we did not get concerning results (ECTX). The concerning thing about the south facing slope was how soft the snow was (it was almost 5pm at this point). I stepped away from the pit and sank in to my hips. We were on a low angle slope, but once you find yourself sinking in to your knee in snow that has been warmed by warm temperatures or sun it's time to find a colder aspect. A person could trigger a large wet avalanche in snow that soft. The problem with finding a colder aspect or anyplace without a crust right now is that there's a chance we could trigger an avalanche wherever the buried surface hoar exists. This is a tricky time of year especially this year with such a tricky weak layer we are dealing with.