Soft cold conditions near Saxon Creek.

     We toured up and around near Saxon Creek today. On the ascent snow conditions were soft and unconsolidated on shaded aspects. Some of the more north and cold areas felt like near surface facets are starting to form in isolated areas. Down low @ 6700' there was roughly 160cms of total snow in this area. There was also scattered pine needles and pine cone debris within this area from recent winds. As we contoured up and around to more east facing aspects, wind effected snow and breakable wind slabs became more abundant. These wind slabs were anywhere from thin veneer layers up to 3-4" thick in isolated areas. In some cases the wind board would be supportable but for short periods of time and only in exposed areas where wind was most intense. I did a few hasty pits and hand shears within these slabs and some showed planar results but were very small areas of wind slabs. As we continued to climb snow conditions would bounce back and forth between wind slabs and soft powdery snow all the way to the summit @ 9000. From the summit we could see the Sierra Crest and there was no signs of recent avalnches within our view. On the way down I stopped and dug a pit on a NW aspect @ 8700'. The snow pack was right side up with fist hard snow near the surface and 4F below in the top few feet in the snowpack. I performed a couple compression tests in this pit and got Q2 and Q3 results, nothing collapasing and nothing very planar at all. Snow conditions would remain cold and soft until we reached lower elevations again and solar radiation was softening south facing aspects, making the surface snow wet and moist. No signs of unstable snow presented itself during our tour.