This is a windy spot. The places that have continuous snow cover above treeline are deep (200 to 300 centimeters) and pretty solid. The wind has packed snow into these areas pretty consistently all season. We didn't find any weak layers close to the surface in the above treeline areas, and we dug on north, northeast, east, southeast, and south-facing aspects. You can find thin rocky spots where there is 6 to 12 inches of facets over the rocks, but those spots are small and patchy. Steep wind-drifted near treeline areas are the most dangerous spots. Look for fresh wind slabs in these areas in steep cross-loaded gullies. In below treeline spots look for stiffening slabs over a fully weak and faceted snowpack on west through north to northeast-facing aspects.

The Heart Lake avalanche is coded in https://avalanche.state.co.us/report/9c366c2e-f2b9-435b-b1d9-c6a822cd8bc0

James Peak Wilderness, Haystack Mountain and Heart Lake

We started from the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel. We followed South Boulder Creek toward Rogers Pass. We traveled north to Heart Lake. We descended through the trees back to South Boulder Creek and back to the vehicle.

The places we traveled, and we tried to see a lot of aspects, were pretty strong. We dug a few snowpack profiles near Heart Lake Cirque in the above treeline elevation band. One was on a slope next to a large natural avalanche above Heart Lake, which most likely happened a couple of days ago. The snowpack was about 200 centimeters deep. The top 40 to 50 centimeters was wind-hammered broken stellar packed into a 4-finger to 1-finger slab. Below that was a pencil-hard layer that was hard to break through with a shovel, so we stopped digging. There were no weak layers in the top of the snowpack, and there is no way a rider could penetrate the pencil layer. It's hard to tell how widespread the pencil layer is. It doesn't look like it was present in the track of the avalanche. We moved to a south-facing slope. The snowpack was around 300 centimeters deep and pretty consistent -- wind-fragmented stealers mixed with rounds, 1-finger to 4-finger hard with a 15-centimeter layer of small faceted grains at the ground. We found no weak layers near the surface, and snowpack tests yielded no results. We moved into the near treeline elevation band. The sun built a thin crust on south and southeast-facing slopes today, and we noticed a few spots around steep rocky areas where there were fresh, wet rollerballs. We'll need to watch these crusts once they are buried. The snowpack was 150 to 200 centimeters thick. The snowpack was consistently strong, with now weak layers near the surface. We could get small column tests to fail on the depth hoar, which was weaker in the near treeline elevation band than in other places, but no propagating failures on other tests. Below treeline areas are either completely faceted or are slowly starting to build a stiffer slab.

Windy at the ridgetops, otherwise warm and sunny.