Went back to Cardiff thinking the 5 or 6 inches of graupel from yesterday combined with the 6 new inches of light density snow would drastically improve riding conditions, little did I know that yesterdays damp snow had frozen so what we ended up with was something like dust on crust conditions, luckily the crust was forgiving, and superficial. Unlike yesterday the new snow was not bonding well to the old frozen surface, long running sluffs in steeper terrain was commonplace on the N facing and the debris piles were getting fairly large. We even managed to find a soft slab on the upper ridge line that popped out with a ski cut with about a 6 inch crown. I would think both these instabilities will stabilize quickly and wet activity will be tomorrows main concern.

Photos: crown of the soft slab we released, long running sluffs and debris piles, quick pit on the S facing at about 10,200ft that shows the new snow on the surface a superficial melt freeze crust and saturated snow underneath that you could actually wring free water out of.