Small Storm Slab on Andesite Peak

We toured in the Andesite Peak area today.  Heavy snow this morning with strong SW winds made for near whiteout conditions on our drive up to the trailhead.  Heavy snow continued throughout the morning hours and we mainly toured in BTL terrain for visibility and to stay out of the wind.  We made several observations in this terrain mainly focused on the new storm snow.  At 7300' we found a very thin rain crust that formed at the beginning of this storm on Saturday night Jan 7.  This rain crust had a layer of graupel and needle snow crystals on top that failed easily with hand shears and CT's.  As we moved up in the terrain, we had similar and very consistent results on this same layer at 7600'.  The clouds started to clear out with the snow stopping around noon, with improved visibility.  We saw a small storm slab avalanche in BTL terrain that appeared to have failed naturally during the storm.  It was partially covered by additional storm snow.  We did a ECT adjacent to the crown in nearby terrain and got an ECTP-14 on this same layer of graupel/needles just above a heavier snow layer at this elevation.  This layer was down 30cm from surface.  Upon leaving, we received a report from another party about a skier triggered wind slab avalanche on the upper part of Andesite Peak.