North side of Mountain Loop Highway

Overall we didn't find weaknesses that we were currently concerned about where we traveled. We were surprised by calm to light winds and no active or previous signs of wind loading, which may be specific to where we traveled. North-facing terrain above 5000ft skied like "cream cheese". Heavy, but not bad. Other areas were moist and we described as "manky". 

Traveling all the way up to 5300ft we found the upper portion of the snowpack was heavy. In most places it was ever so slightly moist, except north-facing terrain above ~5100ft, although still heavy. There was a lack of evidence of previous wind transport, but given the heavy nature of the snow it doesn't appear like much transport would occur unless the wind really rips through the area. No surfaces where we traveled were crusty, suprisingly. This was likely due to the above freezing temperature during the day.

There was just over a foot of snow above the Early February Crust above 5000ft. We found rounding facets (weak snow) just above the EFC on the northern half and flat surfaces above 5000ft.  We didn't investigate other areas. We didn't get any Compression Test or Extended Column Test failures on that layer. However, we had hard Compression Test and ECTN results on a layer just above the crust that is present about 20cm (8") below the surface. 

Snowline started around 3000ft. Even at that elevation there was about 3" of new (but melted and refrozen) snow over the EFC, likely from 2/15.