Aspen

Observed a few natural soft slabs on wind-drifted slopes from last week's storm and one or two very small loose wet avalanches in the afternoon.

Not a cloud in the sky, and an occasional light breeze from the west, but mostly calm. Cold morning very quickly warmed up after about 10:00 with some strong April sunshine making it feel much warmer.

The snowpack on the south half of the compass consists of either a thick, supportable melt-freeze crust (MFcr) or a thinner breakable MFcr on the snow surface depending on your aspect and slope angle, with around a foot of wet snow beneath it that is resting on top of a refrozen, homogenous snowpack of melt forms. West and east-facing slopes in the morning had the worst travel conditions, with the crust too thin to support but thick enough to trap your skis underneath it, while due south MFcr's were fully supportable until they melted around 9:00 or 10:00. Due north had about 1 to 2 feet of dry to moist snow resting on the same homogenous melt form snowpack making for ideal ski conditions on steep, north-facing slopes above treeline. Below 10,500 to 11,000 feet, even the snow on due north had variable surface crusts and wet snow, slowing down travel. There were fewer cornices than I've ever seen along the ridgelines deep in the Elks, and any slopes that looked wind-loaded from last week's storm showed no signs of instability. On north-facing slopes where there is still some structure to the snowpack with hardness changes in old facets and depth hoar near the ground, the snowpack is fully saturated with water, and any snowpack tests that produce failures wouldn't translate to slope-scale avalanche release under these conditions. Below about 10,500 feet the snow coverage quickly becomes discontinuous to non-existent even on proper north-facing slopes.