Quick report
This was a short jaunt to break up a town day and to look at the snowpack in an area without recent observations nor a forecast. I traveled entirely with skis on, finding supportable, continuous, predictable coverage throughout my walk, beginning a bit above 6,000'. Aside from the steepness and iciness of the slope, skinning was easy and I did not hit any objects on my ascent or descent. There is continuous snow coverage in the starting zones and tracks of the large paths that hit Warm Springs road most years. This coverage continues all the way down to valley bottom and the track conditions are favorable for producing a fast moving, long running avalanche. A major storm that deposited a significant slab in the starting zones of these paths would bring the possibility for large avalanches hitting the road. Snow surfaces had not faceted enough to produce a dry loose/facet-lanche problem, but it did feel like we were heading in that direction.
Weather
Variable thin, high clouds limited solar input, which has been the theme since snowfall ended a few days previous.
Snowpack
Quite an ugly snow surface developing at lower and middle elevations here. At and below 6,500', a thin, stiff snowpack covers the landscape, topped with rain crusts, facets, and surface hoar. Visually, the snow doesn't look like much, but below the weak snow it is stout and makes for easy travel. It will also make a smooth bed surface for future snowfall. As I climbed, the rain crusts were separated by increasing amounts of snow, much of which had intensely faceted. Faceting wasn't as bad once I got above the level of the inversion, but that is a relative comparison. I did not look at either the New Year's weak layer or the early season facets, just moving through terrain and observing surfaces.