I was out in the Hoyt Peak area today. NW aspects skied surprisingly heavy and dense. South facing slopes had a mix of creamy powder, wind loading and crust. I did a couple of laps on a SE concave line which offered some protection from the sun starting at 10100 K. The snow depth was a little thin, 80 cm, but was filled in good enough to ski several different lines. ECT 4 SP about 20 cm from the surface. The failure occurred below a 3 cm melf-freeze crust on fist hard facets about 10 cm thick. I observed only one slide on the ESE face about 60 ft wide on convex terrain that was probably less an 6 inches deep. The slide appeared to have naturally run after some wind loading from the south. No whomping or cracking. It seemed to be the case where the snow pack had poor structure, weak stability but little energy to work with. Plenty of surface hoar growth to note.
