As my screen door whipped open this morning bending the closure mechanism I was reminded that "Nothing good comes from an east wind" - that was either Shakespeare, or UAC's Kowboy, but whoever it was, was right! Last night/today's wind was cold, pernicious, and long lasting ('til about 3pm) and seemed to be working its way even into sheltered areas. Despite the fact that there wasn't much new snow and it came in light, the wind whipped it into pretty good cake that made for surprisingly challenging trail breaking - time and again -and created shallow slabs (up to maybe 4" thick). I transitioned my mindset over the last week or so from cavalier to somewhat cautious today, because as Drew pointed out in his forecast this morning, things were weird/unusual, and that was borne out as I climbed and the snow got deeper, and thicker.

I skied some steepish lines in pretty deep/thick trees, and then on my exit on a pretty open, west/NW facing slope saw that there appeared to be a decent-sized slide that I guessed had been triggered earlier in the day by skiers, since it wasn't fully blown-over with new snow and there were a good handful of tracks nearby. With a decent slope on the other side there must have been some good opportunity for snow transport up and over the ridge, and the strength/swirliness of the wind probably created a slab on the lee side slope, which is probably not much of a frequent flier because it's normally fronting the typical prevailing winds; it's understandable that this could be misread today. There wasn't a distinct crown so it was shallow, the debris wasn't deep, and there were no obstacles in the way, but it ran a long way and was a bit sobering nonetheless. This will probably heal fairly quickly, but exposed zones could still be pretty triggery on Thursday, though for sure some exposed terrain may have snow windblasted into place....but on which aspects? The wind seemed to be coming from every which way as it started to fade out in the afternoon.