The highway was windy, the Big Y was sheltered and sunny

Today we battled through the valley bottom ground blizzard and were rewarded with a bit of sunshine higher up (above 1300m). As soon as we entered the big Y and werein a valley perpendicular to the direction of the wind, it was quite calm and the snow was sheltered from wind affect. We avoided slopes with signs of wind loading (pillows, convexities, cornices) and gave large slopes a wide berth. We probed 170 cm on a northeast slope at 1750m. We probed around throughout the day and found pretty consistently less than 200cm of snow. Below 1500m we could consistently find the crust that formed late January down about 50 cm. The whole day we could hear the wind howling and see it moving snow at ridge top.