Blue lakes surface hoar

Mostly sunny today and pretty cold in the shade. Ridge tops had some light winds. Left the lot around noon hoping to find decent snow. Only a few inches of fresh snow existed on anything but mostly north facing sheltered areas. Below those few inches was a crust that was breakable in areas but proved to be pretty firm in others. 

Attempting multiple cuts on test slopes we were not able to get anything to trigger. We did not see any signs of avalanche activity either. 
 

There was surface hoar at two separate locations, one west facing and the other north facing, both at 8300 feet.