Did lots of poking, stomping, test slopes, hand pits, digging, and tapping all over the place. I'll try to make this a cogent summary.

Low elevations:

Went looking for buried surface hoar. Wanted to see if the warm start to the Dec 1 stone storm meant rain in the mountains and sufficient penetration to do anything to this buried weak layer. It had no effect and instead seemed to have simply strengthened the Nov 28 snow, leaving 1F - F right side up snow atop the buried surface hoar. This failed easily--collapsing and relatively distant cracking with little provocation. This has me concerned for what is typically sheltered "safe" low elevation terrain, such as Indicator Hill, the Backyard, and the Birthday Bowls.

The exception was very wind affected terrain where we found stout 1F/P 30-45cm wind slab that seemed to bridge over the facets below.

Mid elevations:

Found buried surface hoar up to about 7600ft or so in sheltered terrain, corroborating prior obs. Otherwise, the theme was wind affected on top of the old November facets. Depending on the severity of the exposure, there were easy soft slab shears in the new/wind affected snow, ranging from an inch or 2 to about 6 inches below the surface. Dug a pit on NNW at 8000ft in 70cm of snow, wind slab atop facets, and found easy shovel shears in the wind affected surface snow, but no ECT results despite the poor structure. Truly sheltered terrain with little/no wind effect was soft powder on top of soft facets. But wind affect was the norm and untouched snow the exception.

Upper elevations:

Topped out the tour just shy of 8800ft and was surprised to find winds were not dramatically increased as we approached the saddle. Photo of pit below, NE 8700, x2 ECTP (12 and 19) failing @ 40-45cm down at the interface between the November facets and the newer snow. If the PWL didn't get you, the soft slab failure at the surface of the storm snow might. In keeping with the theme, wind affected snow surface up high, too, and prominent cross-loading in many of the gullies on the Cutler headwall.

This collapse happened at 6400ft one step off the skin track in a steep E facing pocket about 6 or 7 feet above my skis.

This collapse is a bit harder to see in front of and below my skis, N facing slope at 6500ft. Experienced similar collapsing and cracking up to about 8000ft.