Marion's Big Mouth

Day off tour into the Flathead Range. WInds, clouds, and sub-freezing temps kept surface snow layers from becoming unstable due to radiation. 

• 3-6" of recent snow above 1/12 Melt-Freeze crust. Already faceting in valley bottoms and shaded, sheltered slopes. In hand shears, there's a distinct interface at the crust with planar shears, but snow seems too cohesionless to form a slab in places I tested.
• Recent winds have left wind-skin, wind crust, and dappling on many open northerly and easterly slopes. Crusts soft (4F+) and up to 5 cm thick. Found no wind slabs. 
• More wind than expected on upper elevation ridges. Gusty and not sustained, but light to moderate blowing snow during gusts. 
• Sun caused some roller balls to fan out on steep, mid-upper elevation southerly slopes. Not widespread, and nothing we saw coalesced into a wet loose avalanche, even in sun-sensitive chutes on S side of Essex Mountain.
• We avoided obviously wind-loaded northerly and easterly slopes. We did ski 30-40* north with no signs of instability.
• We avoided a very large, convex and rocky start zone on a large, consequential southeast-facing run, which was a likely spot to harbor variable snow depths and trigger points. We did sneak in lower, where the slope was more planar. Snow on this run barely sun affected, even at valley bottom.