Mixed bag of problems on Heavens Peak

Took advantage of clearing weather to get up high in elevation

• NE winds increased mid-morning, visibly transporting snow across summit ridgelines.  In the cirque at higher elevations, we encountered fresh cross loaded drifts up to 15" thick (F hard), without a consistent pattern to the drifting direction (some from West winds as well).  We spotted three fresh wind slabs (D1, soft slabs) that ran naturally in the past 12 hours.  I  triggered cracks up to 4 feet long in drifted areas but no slides.  Drifts were relatively sparse in distribution and easy to identify by tracking snow depth.
• The snow surface is generally still very fluffy (F hard new snow), increasing from 2" at low elevations to 8" at upper elevations.  Several small loose dry avalanches ran today on sunny slopes.  I suspect the snow surface will become faceted by next week. 
• We observed an older hard slab avalanche that likely failed sometime during the Thanskgiving storm.  The crown was ~18" thick and it failed on a buried graupel layer on the apron of a steeper slope.  The hangfire was still reactive to ski stomps.  This structure over Graupel appeared to be an anomaly, but we also observed this same hard slab structure over the November dry spell facet layer in pockets on NE aspects above 7,000'. Due to some uncertainty with this trickier persistent slab structure, we turned away from a consequential NE slope that we had planned to climb.
• In general, the snowpack is shallow and faceted at low and mid elevations, along with one or more crusts on sunny aspects.  Higher elevations have a deeper and stronger snowpack, but still some faceted snow, just harder and smaller grained.