Lost Trail Backcountry

The objective today was to look at the distribution of the facet/crust combination at the interface of the past weeks snow and the top melt/freeze crust. Between 8000' and 7000' on all aspects I found a crust surrounded by facets buried by 2-3 feet of snow. I did multiple rounds of ECTs, CTs, and PSTs on this layer and found that about 50% of the time, I could get full propagation across the column. Every CT resulted in sudden planar fracture character. 

At the same time, people were starting to step out and ski larger terrain without triggering avalanches. With that, I would say we are in a moderate, maybe scary moderate conditions where we see a poor snowpack structure with a weak layer and a slab, but red flags like collapsing or whumfing are not evident. 

Along ridgelines the winds were transporting some snow but no major wind loading event was observed today. 

At low and mid elevation, temperatures were warm with a rollerball cycle along roadcuts but no natural wet loose activity was observed.