A few inches of new snow plus wind deposits at Kingsbury

There were only a few inches of new snow in this area by mid-afternoon today, but W/NW winds were transporting the new snow and piling it deeper in isolated locations. I went to the ridge just south of Genoa Peak because it has some steep, wind loaded test slopes without significant consequence, unlike most of the E facing avalanche terrain in this area that is very consequential. 

I was surprised to find up to 2ft of wind loaded snow just below the ridge top. It tapered away back to just a few inches of new snow within 50ft. Test slopes cracked and produced small avalanches that were somewhere between dry loose and wind slab. The wind slabs failed 6-8 inches down on a density change. I performed an ECT that propagated on wind slab on my 11th tap, but as I was walking between the ECT and my snowmobile, I noticed a weak, granular layer underfoot. I performed another ECT and was careful to excavate below the potential old snow weak layer (a thin crust with small facets below it), and got propagation on the facets on my 21st tap, 35cm down from the surface. The 35cm above was new wind blown snow. I moved about 100 yards away and got the same result. All along this ridge line, new wind slab deep enough to promote propagation was isolated to within 50ft of the most wind loaded terrain.

I rode around different aspects to see where this crust/facet combo existed, and found it on NW, NE, E aspects. On due N aspects, there were some facets without a crust, and the facets weren't as developed as where there was a thin crust. Because of the isolated wind loading, this wasn't concerning at my locations today, but will be worth monitoring with more new snow and more wind loading. It could have been more concerning today if this area had significant cross loaded features, or if new wind loading had extended farther from ridge tops.