Today our party set out to ski the low angle slopes Northwest of Duschene Ridge, above Mill Hollow. The snow surface was diamond sparkles with little evidence of wind effect, appearing as if it had all fallen straight from the sky. We were interested to see how the steeper East facing slopes had loaded after the recent winds. We performed an ECT near the ridge crest at 10,000'. The snowpack had a meager depth of 95 cm. At the ground interface we noted loose and unconsolidated sugar in a layer approximately 10-12 cm thick (photo). Above that was a denser slab, though one could still push a fist into it. Finally, at the top sat a layer of loosely consolidated snow approximately 30 cm thick. At tap 5 from the elbow a crack appeared between the top layer the slab and propagated across the column. We continued the test and no further signs of instability were noted.

While we stayed out of avalanche terrain entirely, the steeper East-facing terrain appeared more or less as advertised with a slab sandwiched between two weak layers. This structure, combined with the connectivity of the slab/top layer interface and the overall shallow snowpack, seems to be flashing a pretty clear "Keep Out" sign for now.