Just in the nick of time

We headed into the Flathead Range today to get a feel for new snow instabilities. Overall we experienced calm winds and steady snowfall rates of an inch an hour for the last few hours of our tour. 

• About 2 to 3 inches of new snow overnight consisted of mostly graupel. This pooled up to roughly 6 inches in aprons and bottoms of rock bands. 
• Hand pits had clean, planar shears at the new/old snow interface (graupel). Below the new snow was a hard wind slab approximately 4 inches thick and hollow feeling. 
• We dug a pit on a northerly aspect at roughly 6400 feet. We had propagating results with easy force. This failed on a fist hard layer of snow below a 1 finger hard wind slab.
• By 1:30 PM roughly 8 inches of new snow piled up and snowfall rates began to exceed one inch an hour. This was our cue that it was time to leave the terrain we were in. 
• During our exit, we easily ski cut loose dry avalanches on southerly aspects where new snow is landing on a slick melt-freeze crust. In bigger terrain, I would expect these avalanches would have entrained enough snow to bury a person. 
• We felt the temperature drop throughout the day making the new and recent snow right side up. 

Overall the new snow was low density and easy to manage today. I don't expect this was the case throughout the range. In this location the winds were calm, however, during our drive out we experienced heavy precipitation rates and blowing snow in the Middle Fork Corridor. The highest risk part of my day was driving through Badrock Canyon.