We spent the day meandered through the southern Whitefish range, the morning starting out a beautiful bluebird day before turning to broken skies. We experienced all weather conditions other than the r- word, with light winds coming out of south. We decided to travel on conservative (<30 deg slope) terrain to an elevation of 6783 where we dug a pit on a 20 degree SE slope. Our Extended Column Test revealed ECTN14 at 15cm and ECTN22 at 20cm. This was at the new snow interface and a crust interface. We were not able to get propogation in the ECT, however our PST revealed PST 40/120 (End) at 65 cm depth. Upon further inspection, we found burried surface hoar above the 1/13 crust. These results indicated to us that slab over our persistent weak layer is stubborn enough to not necessarily be impacted by skier weight, but if triggered, can clearly propogate. We decided to continue skiing low angle pow pow and had a beautiful safe day in the mountains.
