It was nice to travel on soft snow from the top of Wolf Creek Pass. While traveling on new and drifted snow on north through east facing slopes, I did not experience cracking or collapsing. On solar aspects the snow surface was moist, and it turned into a thin melt freeze crust when cloud cover moved in. On all aspects a firm melt freeze crust sits below this most recent storm snow. On a steep west facing slope the new snow was easily sluffing on the melt freeze crust that sits below the snow since April 1st. In areas above treeline that have a more connected slab of freshly drifted snow, it is likely that these avalanches could propagate further with more snow and wind in the forecast.

Lobo electronic site, Gibbs drainage.

On a north facing slope at 11,600' the height of snow was 190 cms. There is still dry depth hoar 60 cm below the snow surface. In an extended column test I did not have any propagation. I had an ECTN 15 down 40 cms, which failed above a 2cm thick refrozen melt water layer. On a west facing slope at 11,500' the melt freeze crust that sits below the snow from the last several days was knife hard. The new snow cracked only a couple of feet in the front of the skis before sluffing.

Since April 1st I measured 15.5" of new snow, 0.8" of snow water equivalent. Sunny and warm until noon, then S-1 for the rest of the afternoon.