Shifting winds and freezing fog at Spooner

Snow was moist and provided funky riding from Spooner to 8,000ft, but above 8,000ft the snow was colder and drier. 6-8 inches of new snow on top of yesterday's tracks. Below 8,000ft the rain layer was quite noticable, and shifting winds put drifts and shallow spots into unusual places. With little warning, we'd go from riding deep powder to sudden bottom-outs on the rain crust. From 8,000-8,200ft, it may have still rained here, but the crust wasn't as obvious and could have been from warm snow and/or warm temperatures. Above 8,200ft I needed to use my shovel to carefully scrape back from trench walls to find the crust. I looked in several of my trenches and didn't see any signs of faceting near this crust on any aspect or at any elevation.

At the pin drop, my shovel tilts showed a few planar failures within the top 50cm of snow. Compression tests were Resistant Planar at the same heights, and ECTs did not propagate. Note this location is leeward but not heavily wind loaded because of a long stretch of dense trees to the windward side.