Signs of instability on Powderhouse Peak.

      I toured up Powderhouse Peak this morning. When I got there around 0930 it was snowing but it was obvious on the trail that it had been raining before @ 7400'. The top 6" of snow was super saturated and punched through to softer snow below it. As I hiked up wet heavy tree bombs were falling, snow was clumping to my split skis and rain runnels were present in lower elevations below tree line. At 7800' I stopped, dug a pit and searched for the Jan. 4th rain crust. I performed  2xECT and had ECTN results at this elevation. I also did a shovel tilt and the column released as I picked up my shovel. It was clear that the new storm snow under the wet surface snow was the cause of failure. I continued up and at 8500' I could feel the wet heavy snow on the surface was gone and the snow was light and more consistent all the way through. With this change I stopped again to dig @ 8500' on NW aspect and got 2xECTP21 @ 50cms down. The facture character was Q2 and seemed to be similar to recent results on Jan. 4th layer but it was hard to see the grains under windy conditions, snow falling and flat light to determine if it was faceted snow above or below a crust, which was also hard to locate. I continued up towards the summit at got to 9100', here I could feel a clear density change and started feeling wind slab formation with my skis and had chunks breaking off within my steps.  I decided to stop here as it was below the wind line on the ridge and dig another pit on NW aspect. I did 2x ECT and got mixed results. In the first one there was no signs of propagation just ECTN results and in the second one I had the denser wind slab layer @ ~20cm fail,  a weaker storm layer fail around ~35cm and finally a failure @50cm with the same characteristics @ 8500'. Again the layer @ 50cm was difficult to do grain ID under the conditions. I did pull the loop out and looked but this layer was paper thin and showed no signs of any crust within it. After filling my pit back in I transitioned over and headed down hill , the riding conditions were great for a while until I got back below 8500' and could feel the wet heavy snow on the surface again. Back at the truck @ 1300 the snow had stopped for the first time all day and was very light.