Mixed bag Ashman

Today we skied Ashman in the sun and the snow showers. We broke trail with 30+ cm ski pen and lucked out with sunshine on our ski laps and storms pulses on our skin tracks. The winds were blowing moderate to strong from the west/south west at ridge top all day transporting old and new snow into lee features. we also observed a size 2.5 natural windslab on a north east alpine aspect within the last 24-48 hrs. In testing we had a hard result in an extended column test fully propagating on the Jan 26th crust, down 1 meter in this location. We played it mellow and kept to fairly simple terrain and small features while we gain more understanding on how this layer will react with the new load.