cake covering in the Northern Swan

Today we rode into the Northern Swan Range.

• We found a thin crust (.5-1 cm thick) from the valley floor to the ridgetop at 7200'.  The upper elevations harbored only 1-2 inches of new snow from this morning on top of this crust.  
• We were able to find some  thinner windslabs(10-20 cm) from yesterdays front, however, we opted not to travel on the slopes that would have had held the thickest of them.  The windslabs that were buried under the most recent crust were unreactive in any of our tests.  
• The reactive layer we did find today was a layer of well preserved buried surface hoar capped by a thin crust.  We had results with moderate force failing below the crust.  We were able to find this layer on all aspects from 6,000 ft to the ridgeline.  
• Visiblility was great all day and we were able to lay eyes on two recent avalanches from over the weekend.  Our best guess was they were 1-2 foot thick wind slabs that failed at the buried surface hoar.  Both avalanches were around the 7k mark and NE in aspect.  
• The predicted precip started late in the afternoon as we were leaving. Luckily for us it stayed near the freezing mark all day and was snowing in the parking lot when we loaded the machines.