We started the tour with about 5cm of new snow already on the ground, beginning to fill in the old tracks and wind effects; another couple cm fell during the tour, thought snowfall seemed to be tapering. New snow was medium density, not really moist, but would stick together just a bit if pressed.
Went hunting for crusts in the old snow surface and came up short. At low elevation, there was just the barest hint of melt freeze crust, but I suspect temperatures just didn't quite dip low enough to make a hard freez . At mid elevation, even on some southerly aspects around 8000ft or so there was sufficient work by the wind to make this the dominating factor, with any refreeze on the surface prior to the new snow indistinguishable underneath one's skis.
Instead, we found plenty of wind blown snow creating a surface layer of firm (1F to P in most places) but damp snow beneath the new precipitation. The new snow was not bonding well to this surface, demanding scribing while sidehilling on the uphill to avoid slipping out. Surface snow sluffs were not long running. We did manage to cause the slightest bit of cracking in the surface storm slab, but this appeared to be a one-off event (see photo). A NE facing test slope just above 8000ft yielded nothing of note.
