Continued storm at Blue Lakes

3-4ft of new snow above the crust/facet combo observed at Blue Lakes today. Pin drop at mid-slope bench was closest we got to big avalanche terrain, where heavy tree cover in between that location and the steep terrain above indicates no historic slides have reached the mid-slope bench. However, poor viz obscured views of the steeper terrain above, so I was unable to see evidence of recent avalanches. Snowfall increased to almost 2"/hour by our departure in mid-afternoon. Winds were Light and variable in direction.

Pic 1: Near pindrop. Rightside up storm snow above the crust/facet combo. Shovel tilts and compression tests showed planar results at 3 depths within the Fist-hard storm snow near the surface. Other riders in the area reported a recent crown from the groomer on a road cut, about 1 foot deep. From their description of the terrain feature, I believe this was on a W aspect near 8200ft. Some very subtle signs of settlement observed near trees, limited to about 3 inches.

Pic 2: Obvious stripes are the crust/facet combo buried several feet down. The snow above needs to settle to 1F hard before a Deep Tap test would work on these facets, but they already check 5 out of 6 potential Yellow Flags: Softer than 1Finger (Fist hard), larger than 1mm (1.5mm), persistent grain type, greater than 0.5mm difference in grain size (1.0mm), and greater than 1 step in hand hardness from the Pencil hard lower crust where my shovel rests. The only Yellow Flag missing is depth, as it's beyond 85cm from the surface. Digging out stuck sleds elswhere showed a similar structure near this same elevation (8000-8400ft), on N, NE, E aspects. We did not ride off-trail on other aspects or beyond that elevation range.