Overcast skies and warm temperatures. Winds were picking up (15-20mph) from the Northeast along the ridge and blowing snow in places.
Observation: Turnagain
Location: Corn Biscuit
Toured up Corn Biscuit ridge to take a look at surface conditions before a quick hitting storm moves in later today/tonight.
Weather
Snow surface
A semi-supportable to breakable crust exists on Southerly slopes along with many West and East aspects. Northerlies are a mix bag of fresh wind slabs, wind packed hard snow and in sheltered areas, nice skiing soft settled powder. Fresh wind slabs and drifts were small and non-reactive.
Surface conditions are impressively variable with respect to aspect.
Snowpack
We dug one pit at 3,100' on a North aspect, ~38degrees. Total snow depth 155cm.
ECTP 21 down 35cm in 1 finger facets Resistant Planar (didn't see a visible collapse, more of a subtle failure).
This result says: It is relatively hard to trigger the weak layer but propagation is possible if an avalanche releases. Adding to the lower likelihood is the decomposing nature of the slab; not something to bet everything on but a piece of the puzzle, we did ski the slope without incident. We also dug in an area the slab was thinner to pinpoint a likely trigger spot.
Pit dug in one of Corn Biscuit's Northerly chutes
Northeast winds were a tad bothersome along the ridge!
Overcast and a high snow line