Cool Breeze on The Nipple

Cool and breezy around Blue Lakes today, with partly cloudy skies that included strong sunshine when clear. I searched around Border Ruffian looking for recent avalanches and other signs of instability, but couldn't find any. There was about 6-8 inches of new snow in sheltered areas, and over a foot in wind loaded areas. Test slopes, mitt pits, hand shears, shovel tilts, and several ECTs all did not produce concerning results. Although there were moderate winds, I did not see any additional wind loading today - there was a very light crust on the surface that may have been preventing wind transport.

Pic 1: After failing to get ECTs to propagate elsewhere, I went to this very wind loaded area and got similar non-results.

Pic 2: Somewhat planar shovel tilts in several locations, but subjectively uninteresting - these took hard taps and were just barely planar, on storm snow that was not much different than the storm snow above or below it.

Pic 2: Wind loaded slopes on the NE aspect of The Nipple. Several other avalanche paths were observed in the area with no recent avalanches seen.