Hate To See Good Pow Go

We went to continental divide to snowmobile and ski in the recent snow.

• As we drove to the trailhead, we watched blowing snow at mid-elevations and along ridgelines. We saw areas of moderate blowing snow throughout the day.
• The morning started with cold temps and 4 inches of cold, fluffy snow as we snowmobiled to 5800 feet.
• On our ride in we saw small loose dry sluffs above the road on north and east aspects.
• The morning was sunny and east and southeast aspects warmed enough to easily trigger sluffs of moist snow. The 8-10 inches of newer snow on northerly mid and upper elevation slopes stayed cold and dry all day.
• As we skinned along the ridgeline, we found recent drifts averaging about 2 feet thick that consisted of 8 inches of low density snow on top of a 4 finger slab. These sat on an old wind board crust. The low density snow sitting on wind drifts clued us into the fact that some of the new surface snow fell after the strongest winds of yesterday. 
• We avoided skiing bigger leeward terrain today because we found reactive cornices on ridgelines and because of the recent wind loading.
• Afternoon clouds rolled in and moist surface snow on east and southeast aspects cooled and started to develop a thin crust. Southwest aspects at upper elevations stayed cold and dry under the clouds until at least after we headed down around 2:30pm. All aspects at road level were also getting crusty.