Late afternoon trip up Lee's Fork from Spruces trailhead. I wanted to see the dust/graupel layer that came in on the front end of the windpocalypse. My roommate noted the brown storm clouds yesterday afternoon from the city and after reading obs from this morning I realized the brown clouds were dust from the west desert. What a storm!

No notable results on the dust layer. Weather was warmer and calmer than expected, only some mild wind gusts.

The new snow was super creamy and felt incredible when I stepped off the skin track, a huge change from the crusty solar malarkey I found in this same zone Friday. Once the sun went behind the ridge and the temperatures dropped the ride down was slow going as the slightly warmer surface snow turned upside down. Solar crusts from the week before were still hidden under the new snow.

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Photo (random thought): Walked by this recent roof-alanche on a cabin in Spruces and had an "ah-ha" moment. In teaching avalanche rescue classes it can be hard for students new to the backcountry to understand scene assessment before going into search an avalanche path. It's one of the more sobering topics we cover, the thought of not going down to dig someone out of an avalanche you witness because the chance of a second avalanche coming down on top of the rescuers could cause more victims. Here is a great visual example of hangfire!