Winds had picked up in the last 24 hours, drifting snow and creating sensitive small cornices. Besides cracking at the ridgetop in the newly formed cornice, I didn't observe shooting cracks within the upper snowpack and the drifted snow. I got a couple of small collapses on basal facets.

Mayflower Gulch

Dug on generally northeast-facing slopes at about 12,000 ft

The upper 3 inches of the snowpack was hard snow from drifting with soft recent storm snow underneath and then a soft faceted layer at the bottom of the snowpack. The slab, which consists of the storm snow from the overnight Nov. 3rd snow, has consolidated in the last 24 hours and become more cohesive. In most tests, I was able to get propagating fractures below this slab in the basal facets. In some places, I found a thin crust within the basal facets but this was not consistent.