Warm day cold snow on Flagpole

We went to Flagpole today with the idea that the old snow prior to the last storm was strong and had been stripped of surface facets by weeks of east winds. Continual pole probing along the skin track and occasionally leaving the skin track confirmed this - there were a few shaded lumps and bumps with weak facets under the new snow, but these areas never extended more than several feet. Otherwise, all we found was strong old snow under 12-18" of cold, unconsolidated snow. There were several prior small sluffs and shallow storm slabs that had been covered by an inch or two of snow at the very end of the recent storm. Mitt pits and kicking steep rollers indicated no storm instabilities remained, and there were also small settlement cones on trees from bottom to top of our ascent. Winds were much calmer than forecast, and no wind transport was observed today. No surface wetting was observed on steep terrain in the area - only in the flats. We only skied steep E/NE terrain, but we could see across Echo Lake onto other more SE aspects and did not see loose wet activity from a distance.

Pic 1: Several prior small sluffs and shallow storm slabs covered by an inch or two of snow.

Pic 2: Settlement cones, though the snow still skied soft and unconsolidated.

Pic 3: Steep SE aspects on Ralston did not appear to have wet loose activity. We couldn't see more S or SW aspects from our route today.