Observation: Girdwood

Overcast skies
Light to moderate snowfall (S1-S2), started raining on the drive home through Girdwood @ 3:30 pm.
Light to moderate NE winds at the ridgeline. gusty at times with moderate snow transport
Temps in the teens to start, rising into the high 20°Fs

6-8" of new snow, becoming slightly 'upside down' as temperatures rose.
Starting to slab up and crack with wind transport at the ridge

The main objective today was to see how well the new snow was bonding to old snow (2-3" of slightly faceted snow with surface hoar at the interface in some locations) and if all the soft snow was sticking or not to the rain crust that is present to around 2500'.
On the way up the snow was low density and was not showing signs of becoming slab like. As soon as we popped into terrain with blowing snow, the snow became a bit more slabby. With a quick pit of the top 2' of snow in a wind-loaded spot at 2400' we found the new snow to be reactive in our compression tests on a mini rime crust at the top of the old snow and on the rain crust. Probing in the area the average height of snow was 160cm/5.2'.

Skiing down the snow was sluffing a little on steep rolls down to the rain crust but was not slabbing up yet.