Strong and cool east winds

Even with an intentionally late start, strong east winds were too cool today to promote surface softening on steep and sunny aspects. Our backup plan was to find soft wind loaded snow in cross loaded gullies, but E winds were strong and redistributed snow in irregular patterns. I was able to produce cracking on W facing test slopes, but we did not encounter wind slabs large enough to be of concern today. This may have been due to our specific route, and not a regional pattern.

Pic 1: Several W facing features were wind loaded, but slabs did not extend far.

Pic 2: W facing test slopes did indicate instability.