Easter egg hunting

Chased larger storm totals in the Mission Range, accessed from the east side.

• 8" to 12" of new, "right-side-up" snow, settled through the day with sunshine and warming temperatures.
• Minimal signs of wind transport until we reached 8,000', at which point we noted a natural D1.5 wind slab and some light drifting patterns in the snow from Saturday's easterly winds.
• The most widespread concern was small, loose avalanches.  The top few inches of new snow sluffed easily, producing numerous D1 natural loose dry avalanches when the sun first hit steep slopes.  These evolved into larger (D1.5) wet loose by midday on southerly aspects.  Increasing cloud cover limited solar late afternoon.    
• The new snow insulated the wet mush below, preventing a solid refreeze below about 6,000' in last week's wet grains.  At mid-elevations, we got frequent small collapses/cracking about a foot thick - this was from the storm interface crust (4/11 crust) collapsing on wet grains below it.  As we gained elevation, this sign of instability went away - the wet snow below the new snow was frozen harder.  
• Noteworthy avalanche activity from last week:  Several D2 wet slabs about a foot deep, and a D2 full depth glide avalanche on a small terrain feature. These avalanches were on mid-elevation southeasterly aspects.  
• We felt comfortable skiing steep terrain where wind drifting was minimal and where the 4/11 crust was frozen and supportive.  We made a plan to avoid high, steep due north terrain where we had the most uncertainty for lingering persistent slab issues, given the minimal warming that these slopes saw last week.