Quick report
Due to the high heat forecasted for today, we started walking at 5am. A start at 4:00-4:30am would have been even better in retrospect. The overnight refreeze yielded a breakable crust at ~3000 feet, transitioning to a punchable crust at ~4000 feet, and then into a fully supportable crust at ~5000 feet. At ~5000 feet and above, we saw very widespread wind-affected snow. In most places, this meant about a 2-inch thick wind skin. There was significant spatial variability in whether the wind skin was supportable or breakable. We did not observe any signs of instability from wind slabs anywhere: all wind-affected snow seemed very well bonded to the layer beneath. Today, corn-o-clock at 8000 feet on the swift glacier (south aspect) occurred at about 10:15am. By 10:45am, skiing on the wind-affected snow did not feel like skiing on a hard wind slab, but rather like skiing on strangely shaped corn. Skiing from 8000 feet to 6000 feet was excellent, albeit slightly grabby. From 6000 feet and below, the snow was extremely overbaked, and felt quite dangerous to ski on given how difficult to turn and grabby it was. Our party (and most other parties we saw) booted downhill from 6000 feet down to about 3700 feet, because it was faster (and much safer) than attempting to ski it, even though it was only 11:30am ish. By the time we reentered the trees, the shaded snow felt fine to ski, but didn't last for very long before hitting lots of rocks on the trail out, necessitating booting again.
Avalanche
Observed lots of signs of recent wet loose activity from the heat (especially on extremely steep slopes far from the trade routes on Helens). There was widespread wind-drifted snow, but did not observe any signs of instability from wind slabs, as all wind-affected snow seemed fairly well bonded to the layer beneath.