Mickey's Big Mouth

Wandered through all three elevation bands on the shady side of a ridge in the central Flathead Range, to assess various avalanche problems.

• Morning snow showers (flurries? squalls?) dropped 1-3" of low density snow that turned moist by mid afternoon on southerly, low-elevation slopes. This snow was blowing around at upper elevations after winds picked up early afternoon. We found only a few spots near a 7600 ft summit where it appeared to be accumulating into drifts. No signs of instability in these drifts, yet. 
• We saw one small natural dry snow sluff (avalanche details tab) on a steep, mid-elevation, forested slope while we were ascending. This sluff involved the morning's snow. Though we did not descend this terrain, it seemed we were likely to trigger similar sluffs.
• Older wind slabs (4-8" thick) near ridges and in open, easterly bowls did not crack or collapse under multiple skiers. 
• We saw the debris from ~half dozen natural wet loose slides that probably ran Friday (avalanche details tab). These slides ran on southerly slopes, with the debris reaching lower tracks or runouts. We saw nothing similar on steep, northerly slopes. 
• Below the new snow, we found spongy or grabby crusts on mid elevation westerly slopes below about 6500 feet. Similar crusts were also present on northerly slopes below about 5000 feet. Our travel on southerly slopes was limited to low elevations, where the new snow fell on a hard and supportable crust. 

We climbed and skied slopes to 40 degrees one at a time, including a very large avalanche path that ran to the valley floor. There were more of these potent runs, maybe a six pack's worth, but one was enough for the day.