Geez - how do we keep getting bluebird days of skiing in NW Montana? Our group toured in the central Middle Fork today and skied a variety of North thru East aspects between 3500' and 6500' and observed no obvious signs of instability. We generally found 10-20cm of unconsolidated new snow atop old crusts or well-bonded wind slabs. There seemed to be a consistent extra soft 4cm thick layer of near-surface-facets at the new snow/old snow interface (probably left over from the super cold snap earlier this week) and the new snow had not consolidated into a slab atop those weaker grains where we were. We did notice a variety of 1-3 day old small loose dry sluffs above 5000' and clearly wind affected snow features above 6500'. We kept to protected terrain and skied slopes up to 40* with only localized sluffing of loose dry snow.
We also dug a quick hole on a wind effected test slope at 6550' to confirm our suspicions of touchy windslabs in exposed terrain (over 400cm deep...) and received the result of ECTP15 @ 50cm below the surface on a 4cm layer of 4F facets between 1F+ wind slabs (picture attached). Easy call to stick with our plan and keep our frequent spread eagles to non-wind-affected slopes.
