Strong Winds and Minimal Warming in Johnson Canyon

We went to Johnson Canyon because of its low-elevation, sun-exposed SE-S-SW aspects. We thought that some of these slopes might get enough sunshine for the surface to soften despite the cold, windy weather. Once we got above ~6800 ft, the NE winds picked up. By the time we got to the top of the ridge, we both had our hoods on and could barely hear each other over the wind. 

Little to no softening had occurred on the exposed sunny aspects. We decided to look at the N aspects on the other side of the ridge. These slopes had a thin sandwich of soft, weak snow with a thin crust below it with more soft, weak snow below the crust. The weak snow/crust/weak snow sandwich totaled about 4 inches in thickness. In areas exposed to the NE winds, this soft snow was blowing around, but there was not enough blowing snow for wind slab development.
 
We made it back up to the ridge by 12:30 pm and started down the south side. Most of these slopes remained firm, frozen, and loud. We did manage to find some areas of soft wet snow on the SW facing sides of small gullies sheltered from the winds. We did not see any signs of instabilities during our tour.