I hadn't been in Broads yet this year and wanted to see if The Rime had gotten into that typically-cold zone. It had. Pretty weird; at times I was skinning on a nice supportable surface with a coupla inches of powder on it, then suddenly I was on grade 5 water ice clinging desperately to the slope, with no visual change (tho the flat light associated with the micro-storm may have contributed to my inability to discern the subtle difference). Then other times I could stomp and break it to get purchase. Near trees it was sometimes worse, sometimes better, some low angle slopes were tough and some steeper slopes were easy. At one point I had to give up and boot a hundred feet to make a ridge. Had the wind scoured off the bits of thin powder on top of the crust? I couldn't really figure out the rime or reason, so to speak.

It seems to me that at least from an avalanche perspective that rime crust pretty well capped the snowpack, so the weight of a skier won't trigger an avalanche wherever that's present, and it seems omnipresent.

However, where there are a few inches on the surface and the micro-storm dropping an angry inch (really, just a trace) on Monday it was clear to me that it was not bonding well to that slippery surface; on the only steep slopes that I skied it was sluffing very easily. It sounds like there's a storm coming in this weekend and it's hard for me to imagine that this crust will break down before then, and intuitively it seems like it could be a great sliding surface.

Also, of note - I'm not sure if this has been "observed" but the Diving Board appears to have naturaled again off the slabs above, so those are again raw and exposed.