Wind slab hunters

During today's tour in the Middle Fork, we found lingering wind slab instabilities in the wake of yesterday's wind event.

• Apart from some minor sluffs, we found stable snow and good riding in wind protected terrain.
• As we climbed above ~5800', the snow became noticeably denser and more wind affected.
• Today's weather was calm and quiet. In previously wind drifted terrain, we were able to trigger a few shooting cracks and wind slabs up to a foot thick on small test slopes. These were stubborn enough that we had to undercut them before stomping to produce results. The drifts were from southwest wind loading patterns, and failed on low density precipitation particles. 
• In isolated areas, we saw evidence of last night's north winds, and we triggered one harmless soft slab on a south facing rollover. Though more reactive, the northerly winds were the lesser of two evils; the slab was soft and thin in comparison to slabs formed by the southwest wind event.  We used southwesterly terrain features and/or lower slope angles to descend to elevations where the snow was wind protected and stable, at which point we felt comfortable riding in steep terrain.
• Field video is here.