Dry on one side, wet on the other

Toured to the Flathead Crest to observe weak layer growth and snow surface conditions.  

• Small-grained near-surface facets are fairly widespread on northwest through northeast aspects. These are most developed in areas where the wind hasn't tampered much with the snow, but we could also see these grains developing on top of wind board at higher elevations.  
• In isolated areas, most commonly near alpine ridges, we saw 2mm surface hoar. In almost every location we saw it, it was knocked over by today's southwest winds or sunshine.
• The upper 2" to 8" of the snow surface got wet today on E-S-W aspects, depending on aspect and elevation. We saw no natural slides or rollerballs, but we did unintentionally trigger a couple of small wet loose slides. These were on ENE aspects at 5200' - where the snow was soft and had seen minimal surface warming until today.  Other aspects seemed to be unreactive or minor rollerballs where we traveled.  
• We skied a number of steep northerly avalanche paths and saw only shallow sluffing in the surface facets.