Gunnison

About 3" of new snow at 2pm, at 11,500ft. Snowing very lightly to light throughout our tour. Calm to light wind. cloud cover: obscured; wind loading: none; recent snowfall (cm): 7; snow avail for transport: small smounts

A 2-3cm layer of low-density new snow was found under a few cm of more cohesive new snow. We commonly observed very short cracks and informal hand shears in this little bit of new snow.  We didn't commonly find facets above the 1/23 crust on these SE-S facing aspects, like what has been observed in some other areas. Around 11,750ft, the 1/23 crust was around 3cm thick over 1.5-2mm facets and other stacks of crusts. On SE-facing slopes, this crust was mostly supportive to skis, becoming notably stronger as you turned onto a south-facing slope, where it was more difficult to get your skis to edge. . The start zone for this bowl, at about 11,900ft, had a very strong, hard slab of varying thickness.  A west-facing slope at 11,700ft had 1.5 to 2mm facets below the new snow. .