Northern Swans and Sunshine

Spent the morning in the northern Swan Range.

• We saw no obvious signs of instability.
• While isolated wind slabs exist, we found no cracking when stomping on low/no consequence test slopes along ridges up to 7000 feet on all aspects except south.
• Large column test (x2) results at 7000 feet on a NW aspect:
  • ECTX and ECTN26 at 40cm from surface. This layer 40 cm from sfc. appeared to harbor a small surface hoar crystals (a little puzzling at that depth), but these were not consistently widespread when sampling crystals from this layer. These crystals were fairly broken and mostly laying down, but the layer was visually identifiable in the pit wall and thin (~1 cm).
• Surface crust extended to ~4600 ft. 
• Aeneas wind sensor seems to have de-rimed this morning and moderate SW wind along the ridge at our location was similar to reported values from the station.