Mixed bag of conditions out there this morning. North facing sheltered terrain has creamy settled powder that made for some good turns if you can find a line without tracks on it. Above the treeline the snow had a nasty rain/rime crust. Winds were in the moderate range out of the west but were not moving much snow. I did not observe any plumes coming off any of the higher peaks.

Dug a hasty snow pit in the north facing trees above twin lakes pass and just below the edge of the treeline. The slope angle in this location is roughly 25 degrees in steepness. Total snow depth in this spot was about 40cm deep, but is a little bit thinner than the surrounding places I probed, which had 50-80cm of snow. Snow from the last storm has settled to about 8cm. I tried to perform an extended column test twice, but both times the column propagated before it was fully isolated. I also experienced a collapse as I walked back to the skin track. Despite those results, the entire north face of Patsy had been skied without evidence of avalanches.

The new snow has condensed into more of a consolidated layer and has more of the properties of a connected slab. Over the last week we have seen a lot of small to medium sized avalanches that just seemed to lack a more connected slab to create larger avalanches. We now have a connected slab that is going to produce larger avalanches once it becomes loaded in the coming storms. Now is a good time to put together a list of your favorite low angle zones to enjoy over the holidays to avoid the temptation of dipping into steeper terrain.