highly variable surface conditions, one minute you are on supportable base with 3"-4" of creamy powder, then onto breakable crust, to weaker faceted snow that would swallow you whole if you go too near a tree well or even brush beneath the snow (now hard to know where).

In the area we headed for today, total pack was some of the deepest we have seen, a solid 55"+, but again, would vary wildly. We did not experience any collapses or cracking, but no real slab exists in most of the terrain we covered today. On our upstracks we quickly learned to stay away from tree wells where you would immediately be sandboxing up to your knees, but if we stayed in more open terrain or took advantage of snow pillows/whales blown into and between the trees, the snow was supportable. we did not feel the deeper pack hold any surprises other than the variability, and were on slope angles > 35. This all made for some interesting skiing to say the least

we also felt the newer snow on the surface was bonded to crusts well, but did have a CT failure at 15 just below the crust. On ECT, failure again was visible, but would not propagate, and adding the widespread variability in structure, it would be very hard to get something to connect and create a problem

Hazard in similar areas will be the new snow and how well it bonds to old, and of course, windloading, once the storm gets going.

as for today, not much going on, warm temps have settled things out, waiting for the next storm.