Slabs Sliding Up High, Muck Running Down Low

We went to Glacier Park to see the storm today.

• Moderate rain to 4,300' in the morning. The thin, weak snowpack below 5,500' was saturated through and would slide on a crust near the ground if we stomped on small rollovers. Yuck! Don't want to ski anything steep and punch through that melting muck. The groundhogs that live at that elevation must not have seen their shadows.
• The rain turned to moderate snowfall above 4,300'. There were periods this morning where it snowed more than an inch per hour at mid and upper elevations throughout the morning. That's a rapid load on a fragile snowpack. Groundhogs with burrows at those heights must be predicting 6 more weeks of winter.
• From about 5,800' we found small facets above the 1/13 crust on west to south to southeast aspects. We triggered 3 small avalanches that failed on this layer on a southeast-facing test slope.
• Above 6,400' the 3+ inches of new snow was obviously denser that the old snow below (up-side-down) and we got continuous cracking underfoot. These cracks were longer and more energetic on west and east facing slopes where the wind was busy drifting it into new slabs. We weren't super interested in finding out how far we could make those cracks go on steep terrain. Cross that off the list.
• We triggered a large avalanche that broke a foot deep on buried surface hoar on a northeast aspect at 7,300'. All it took was a small cornice drop. This avalanche broke 50 feet wide and ran down the hill out of sight. Found the persistent slab problem and it is ugly! Terrain where we have to tangle with that kind of avalanche? No thank you.
• But what about the deeper layer of buried surface hoar? The one about 2 feet down? We dug a pit to look for this layer on low angled terrain a little further up the ridge. Yep, found the bigger, scarier persistent slab problem. We got propagating test results on both surface hoar layers in our pit. Who would want to risk triggering an avalanche 2 feet deep? Not us.

We decided to ski the low-angle, south facing ridge back down. It was really good skiing, with about a foot total of soft snow above the 1/13 crust - at least until we got back down to where the groundhogs are praying for snow melt and spring...