Soft snow on Flagpole

Soft snow was plentiful at Flagpole today. Stepping off skis resulted in a sinking waist deep in the powder. Temperatures this morning were fairly cold and sun on both shady and sunny aspects remained soft and wintry as of noon today. We observed very deep tree wells in this area. We avoided the steepest terrain off the summit, but did not observe any instabilities in the terrain that we skied. 

Photo 1: Avalanche debris from a previous slide (presumed natural) was buried under about a foot of soft snow. This ran on the steeper terrain directly below the flag.

Photo 2: Minor wind effect observed at the saddle near the summit. Snow was still very soft. This saddle can act as a wind tunnel and there was less evidence of wind effect than we expected to see here. 

Photo 3: Some trees at the summit ridge still held snow despite previous wind and current direct sun. Looking back towards Desolation we were able to see a few crowns on E/NE aspects of Ralston. These definitely had fresh snow on them, so it was difficult to ascertain total size but appeared to be near the D2/R1 size. 

Photo 4: Tree wells were deep and surrounded by very soft snow that might be settling slower than folks are accustomed to due to the cold temps.