Hillman's Highway, Tuckerman Ravine

Skinning into Tuckerman Ravine found variable snow surfaces. Some areas were scoured to a refrozen melt-freeze crust, in other areas the snowpack was right-side up, and in some places there was a stronger surface slab over a layer of weak snow on top of a firm snow layer. We did not find any cracking or surface instability of any kind moving around. 

Due to limited visibility while we were in the Ravine, we limited our overhead hazard by limiting time in any runouts. We were not able to assess if there had been any avalanche activity from Thursday 27th (but no avalanche had run to Connection Cache) . 

Some hand sheers yielded easy to moderate failures on the weak snow layer. The surface slab about a foot thick in this area, was sheltered and protected on an elevated feature with R3 to the left and well above us. Snow slope had a south tilt at 4450 ft elevation. An ECTNH yielded comprehensive failures, with no propagation and based off of how the snow felt underfoot, reacted as we expected. Felt the wind slabs that we assessed were stubborn, but that in more sheltered terrain slabs could be more reactive. The hand hardness was  a1F and foot slab over 3 inches of fist hard snow on a pencil hard firm surface underneath. 

Later, some clearing visibility enabled us to look higher up into start zones and we noticed scoured and wind textured surfaces, limiting any avalanche problem at upper elevation due to high winds.