We were a bit surprised today to find soft settled powder in the Barieto/GB No area of Mineral Fork. Mineral can be a big wind funnel and maybe it was windjacked/slabbed earlier in the week, but now it's kind of recrystalized and there was no surface slab. There had been some rollerballing and small wet point release slides that gave us a bit of confidence that the slopes we were climbing/skiing had taken - and withstood - some small hits to the inevitable PWLs that lurked below. We were definitely in north facing avalanche terrain, but our handy pits indicated decent stability and we stayed in areas that were pretty fat; ie we shied away from high/steep/thin areas up near the top of the Mineral Ridge. You can see in the picture there was a mix of smooth snow and rollerballed/small point released snow that all skied nicely. (and that skinner isn't nearly as steep as it appears!).

But that was today, and the more important question is what about tomorrow? Despite the surface recrystalization I was able to squeeze the surface snow into a snowball, so it wasn't just cold facets, and we all know the sun has been high and warm these last few days so only the truest north is unaffected by the warming of the snow on other aspects, so it seems to me that we should have fairly decent bonding of the new warmish snow to the old warmish snow, and the fact that the storm snow will be spread over a coupla days might mean that the 'pack may not come unglued again? On Monday perhaps the cold air and no more sun will have locked things up a bit and our PWL may be finally put to bed?