Well that wasn't terrible

We went to the central Swan Range to see conditions before the change to stormy weather this weekend.

• We found hard wind slabs below ridgelines that were unreactive to cornice drops, but did propagate in snowpack tests with hard force. We saw minor cracking at a few of our kick turns in wind affected snow, but no shooting cracks.
• We saw several recent storm slab avalanches on steep, leeward, upper elevation slopes. They ranged from very small to a large slab that had propagated across several features. More info in the avalanche tab.
• We found the most recent ice crust to be thick and very hard. It was under about a foot of settled snow on windward slopes, down almost 2 feet where winds had drifted snow above it, and it was near the surface at wind scoured ridges.
• We found graupel and mixed snow grains around the January crusts, but no developed persistent weak layers. We tested the snow above the crusts in a sheltered area and did not get any notable results. We tried piling snow on top of our test column to see if additional loading would change the situation and did get propagation with moderate force at an interface between storm layers about 18 inches deep.
• It didn't warm enough where we were for loose wet avalanche conditions to develop. The snow stayed dry down to lower elevations.
• Without any obvious signs of instability we were comfortable stepping out into steeper terrain. We avoided very steep wind loaded, rocky chutes. Instead we opted to ski planar, well supported alpine slopes one at a time, and steep wind sheltered slopes in the trees.

Video here