Quick report
The temperatures were inverted with -5 at the truck, and weather stations reporting 13 at elevation. Navigating the creeks, ice, and alders in the lower elevations is a chore but manageable. Firm conditions with a trace of snow on it gave way to a breakable crust around 1600'. This crust tapered on our way up the valley and went away around 2600'. We topped out in the sunshine on the pastoral shoulder at 4100'. The ski quality was a mixed bag of facets over spongy bottom, wind packed hard snow in places and thin breakable wind skin in others. The cold temps are doing some work breaking down the crust and made the ski out much better than it was last week, with the only poor skiing between 1600-1800'. Great to be out skiing on a cold, shadowy December day. Numerous glides that were either opening or recently released.
Snowpack
We dug a quick pit on a south slope at 3200'. The location was in a wind loaded area with HS of 320cm. We didn't dally long due to the cold weather. The snowpack structure was a few cms of fluff on a 15 cm pencil hard wind board sitting over 5cm of loose facets. Below this was one finger to pencil hard layers of wind hardened snow. We got an ectn12 down 30 cm on the facets. With extra coaxing we were able to get full propagation, ectp22-24. We found no buried surface hoar in this area.