Quick report
Looking at the snowpack near the Patricia Bowl area today, we found some reassuring signs. There was only about 5-10cm of new snow at 10k' from this last storm, and it was sitting on top of a 1F crust above a packed but F hard 15-20cm of consolidated snow. Ski pen was minimal on this layer, but with boots it was easy to break through the next crust to 20cm of sugary facets below. The good news is that this snow was transitioning enough to be compressed into small snowballs, and it seemed to be bonding well to the crust above it and the dense 4F hard layer that continued to the ground. When stressed with shovel tests, these layers seemed to just crumbled and compress instead of shearing.