Today's powder is tomorrows wet loose.

Today we traveled into the Flathead Range to do three things; assess south aspects prior to tomorrow's warm/sunny weather, hunt for buried surface hoar, and see if wind slabs were causing any issues. 

• South aspects had roughly 12 inches of snow sitting on top of the most recent sun crust. This will cause the biggest concerns going into Friday's warmup. 
• Dug numerous hand pits without finding any preserved surface hoar. We found a thin layer of broken surface hoar in one pit at 6600' on a sheltered, north aspect. No results in test pit.
• Wind slabs were mostly unreactive in the locations we traveled. I would expect they would be reactive in more wind loaded areas.
• No collapsing, cracking, or recent slab avalanches observed.
• At low elevations, we were able to trigger small, loose wet avalanches on north-facing aspects. 

With no apparent red flags, we felt comfortable skiing avalanche terrain up to 40 degrees in steepness.