Intense wind loading on Red Lake Peak.

     We toured up into Red Lake cirque this morning around 0900. At the trailhead there was around 6" of new snow from last night's weather event. On the way up snow conditions were low density and unconsolidated up to the lake. I did see some isolated pockets of surface hoar growth along the way in isolated areas below tree line. I also stopped in a couple areas to look for buried surface hoar from last night and did not find any evidence in any of my hasty pits. Once we reached the lake the winds really picked up and we could see banners of snow off the ridge lines above @ 1030. From here we could also see old large debris piles underneath the cornice lines in the S. aspects of the cirque, one avalanche looked as if the cornice fell and triggered a wind slab below it. We continued to climb up to 8700' on a N. aspect to dig a pit. On our final approach we observed a debris pile from a recent wind slab release on a NE aspect around 9000'. In our pit we found a right side up snow pack with the Dec. 30 rain layer 90cms down. We performed  some compression tests and had a planar result 60cm down. We moved on to a ECT and had no signs of propagation on this same layer. As we were cleaning up our pit we noticed the slope near us had a wind slab release naturally. The crown was 6-8" and propagated ~75' and slid ~ 200' down hill. The slope was the same slope @ 9000' on a NE aspect and was constantly getting wind loaded so not surprising this occurred. We decided to not climb any further as winds and transporting was clearly increasing through out the late morning. On our descent we avoided convex roll overs where wind loading had occurred and finally got below tree line, here the snow was not wind effected and powder skiing. Once back to the truck we could see all the surrounding peaks on the Sierra Crest had big banners and the wind was now blowing on the surface as well.