Just a little higher; it's gonna be POW!

We traveled to the northern Whitefish Range to see if wet snow instabilities would develop. And to get a firsthand look at the MLK freezing rain crust.

• Overcast or obscured skies and cooler than expected temperatures meant no wet snow hazards developed.
• Light snow started falling at upper elevations about mid-afternoon, which transitioned to rain showers in the valley by late afternoon.
• The MLK freezing rain crust was hard to miss. Loud, hard, omnipresent except right next to trees. Some trees. All elevations.
• Though we found some small surface hoar grains atop the crust, the bigger concern seems to be the crust collapsing when loaded. It sits on very soft, dry, low density snow. At this point, it's not clear how much load it would take, though most likely 1.5-3" of water. Video here.
• The holiday crust (12/31) was buried 125 cm below the surface. The snow above it has few, if any, distinct weak layers and gets progressively harder with depth. THe exceptions are density changes or storm interfaces that don't seem likely to persist as potential failure planes.
• We saw one old crown on a northeast facing slope at about 6800 feet. It failed below the ridge crest. From the depth it likely broke on old snow; best guess for date is 1/12.

Because our ascent/ descent route didn't expose us to much, if any, avalanche terrain, we could focus on getting down in one piece.