The wind was keeping windward-facing snow surfaces cool but all other snow surfaces were moist to wet with water starting to make its way into the upper snowpack. The wind was still transporting some snow this morning even though there wasn't much snow left to transport.

Snowmass ski area

Traveled along the ridge and into parts of West Willow to the saddle of Bald Mountain then down the ridge above East Snowmass Creek traveling on some west-facing slopes before coming back into the resort.

Observed a few small Wind Slabs from the last few days, several small Loose Wet avalanches, and got a closer look at the recent Willoughby Ridge avalanche from last week.

The wind was doing a very effective job of keeping snow surfaces cool on all windward slopes with southeast and west-facing slopes still holding dry snow on a frozen crust but wind-sheltered slopes, even north-facing slopes below 12,000 feet that were wind-sheltered, had moist to wet snow surfaces with liquid water starting to percolate through the upper snowpack. Southeast-facing slopes had several slabs of dense, wind-packed rounds with a variety of crusts in between them until you get to the large-grained, dry-depth hoar making up the bottom 1/3 of the snowpack. There is a chance as the crusts on top of the depth hoar melt they just soak the depth hoar causing Loose Avalanches and refreezing at night rather than triggering Wet Slabs without a cohesive slab on top of the weak layer but there is a lot of uncertainty here. On high-elevation west and mid-elevation northwest-facing slopes there are several thick melt-freeze crusts in the upper snowpack with a cohesive mid-pack slab resting on top of similar dry, large-grained depth hoar (up to 10mm). These are the slopes I would be most worried about Wet Slabs come Wednesday and Thursday or even starting today around rock outcrops, cliffs, or other thermal bodies later in the day.

Warm but very windy morning keeping things feeling cold above 12,000 feet. Broken to overcast sky cover on Bald Mountain until about 10:00 when the sky started clearing and the wind died down to a light breeze with moderate gusts.