Dry snow does exist.

Today we went into the northern Whitefish Range to observe wind transport and take a close look at northerly aspects at upper elevation. 

• Observed 3 recent wet loose avalanches out of steep, northerly facing chutes. These appeared to have started near 6500 feet and occurred sometime in the last 24 hours. 
• The snowpack was wet at low elevations and transitioned to a superficial crust somewhere around 5800'. 
• We felt a crust under our feet on north aspects up until roughly 6700 feet. This gave us about 100 to 200 feet of crustless skiing. 
• We dug a snowpit on a north aspect at 7000'. Here we found a very weak upper snowpack structure. We had propagating results on a layer of facets roughly 2 feet below the surface. We also found the late January weak layer a few inches above the January 13 crust. This layer is exactly a meter below the surface and we had non-propagating results on a deep tap test. We found large faceted grains and pieces of broken surface hoar. (see profile) 
• At 230 PM the winds started howling. Moderate to intense wind transport that made for a painful walk on a ridgeline. 

Our initial plan was to ski a steep east-facing slope. After our snowpit tests and observing active wind loading, we decided to stick to sheltered slopes with moderate slope angles.