Beacon Practice and Small Wind Slabs

We went to the southern Whitefish Range to see if wind slabs were developing abve the recent rain crust. Sure enough, we found them.

• Very small, soft wind slabs were reactive on upper elevation leeward slopes and crossloaded mid elevation slopes.
• All of the slabs we intentionally triggered failed on very soft graupel and new snow on top of the crust. These slabs are currently very thin and harmless in size - except where westerly winds had piled snow up to 10 inches thick on top of the crust.
• We consistently found the New Year's eve crust down over 3 feet deep under right-side-up snow. We did not dig for it, but another party told us they did not find proapagting results in their snow pit (south-facing aspect at 6200').
• We were comfortable skiing steep, mid elevation terrain that we worked from the top down, after ski cutting, one at a time, with radios for communication. 
• We made sure to get in a beacon rescue practice, like we do every month. Remember, it's not people wearing beacons that can save their partners, it's the people who practice with their beacons that can effectively perform a rescue.