Paradise Divide

The old drifts were hard and uninviting. We avoided some suspect drifts, most commonly on east and southeast-facing slopes. These hard slabs were the only potential avalanche problem we encountered. We did travel on some smaller drifted features and observed no obvious signs of instability. 

On shooting crack on a NE-facing slope at 10,900ft. Interestingly, the faceted snowpack collapsed into the December droute layer, with a thin faceted 4-F mid pack. Traveled on more similar terrain with no results.

There was more wind-effected snow here today, then when I was last in the area on Wednesday. Some of my tracks from last Wednesday were now raised. 

The most sucpect hard slabs were located in areas I didn't feel comfortable assessing. One safe area, on top of a large drift going into a south-easterly facing slope at 11700ft, had multiple P hard, slabs stacked on top of each other. The primary layer of concern was about 90cm down, consisting of 1mm 4f+ facets. The old hard slabs were specific to E-SE-S facing slopes and were isolated to non-existent on other aspects. 

Norhterly facing, wind sheltered slopes didn't have a loose dry avalanche problem, and I didn't see any skier triggered sluffs over on Purple Palace. 
Southerly-facing slopes were forming crusts up to at least ~11,700ft. West-facing slopes were dry in Paradise Basin, and moist below 11,200ft on our way home.