Tenderfoot

There was 1" of new snow over a breakable crust at the road level at Tenderfoot. As we climbed this became 2 to 3" of new snow over the breakable  (but mostly supportable) crust, which remaied breakable up to our high point of 2,550'. We dug one quick snowpit on a southwest facing slope at 2,550' with no concerning results (ECTN21 10cm down under the breakable crust). The upper 45cm of this snowpack was dry rounds with a few melt-freeze crusts. Below this was more developed melt-freeze grains and crusts that had more moisture in them and some layers were very weak. Then we bumped over to the north side of the ridge and dug a snowpit on a northwest facing aspect at 2,550'. Here we found a relatively dry snowpack. We found the buried surface hoar about 1.5' down from the surface mostly upright. We did not get any official stability test result, but when I pulled the block off with the shovel it popped and slid on the surface hoar. It seems like throughout Summit Lake this layer is slowly stabilizing, but if we find the right spot it could still cause a big avalanche. Temperatures were warming through the day and the snow was sticky on the way down. Riding conditions were challenging. My partner triggered a tiny slab (15'X15') that was 3" deep (as deep as the new snow) and slid on the crust. The new snow wasn't bonding well to the crust beneath. The snow got extremely sticky around 2,000'. It won't take much warming to make some wet snow problems going forward.