Dust on crust

Today we went into the northern Swan Range to get a feel for what kind of surfaces the incoming storm snow will fall on. 

• As expected, southerly aspects at mid and upper elevation held a very hard and supportable melt-reeze crust. 
• The crust on northerly aspects was mostly supportable at middle elevations. At upper elevations, it became very thin at 6700'. We expect that it didn't exist at around 7000'. 
• Below this eggshell crust, we found a layer of large faceted grains. Roughly 2 to 3 mm in size and the layer was about a foot thick. 
• About one inch of snow fell during the day with wind gusts strong enough to transport the little bit of fallen snow. 
• No signs of instability found.