Small sluffs in the Swan

Found a stable, strong snowpack in the Swan apart from some shallow sluffing.

• We felt comfortable skiing one at a time in steep terrain. 3-4” low density new snow in past 2 days; we skier triggered a few small loose snow avalanches in steep chutes.
• Ridgetop winds were light and had formed a few keyboard-sized soft slabs at ridge crest, which produced some minor cracking up to 10” deep.
• The facet crust sandwich is about 3.5’ deep. It was unreactive in pits. The facets are rounding and the hardness and grain size differences are much less distinct than what we’ve observed in other ranges. No signs of instability on this layer.
• Lots of hand pits on various aspects and elevations looking for surface hoar below the recent snow, but couldn’t find any. The old surface consists of a melt-freeze crust to 6200’, sun crust to high elevations on south and westerlies, wind board on leeward upper elevations, and some lightly faceted, settled snow on high, shaded, sheltered aspects. Certainly not the widespread persistent weak layers that we found in the Whitefish Range.