Travel was up low east facing and along the ridge to highline. Total snowpack is quite shallow in the low and mid elevations. Pole probing revealed less than 100cm in most areas.

Hand pits and pole probing painted a picture of a mixed bag lurking in the basement at these low and mid elevation slopes. Sunnier sides of the subridge felt pretty solid straight to the ground and it seemed as if most of the october layer probably melted on these slopes before the snow machine turned back on. However, as soon as you wrapped on to shadier aspects, the snowpack was noticeably deeper and had a few inches of loose, large grained facets at the base in some (but not all) areas.

Overall - the basal facet problem seemed patchy, the slab, although thin, seemed strong, and the new snow was non-wind affected and right side up. Still - not enough for me to bet the farm. You wouldn't catch me on any of the bigger north/northeast facing runs further up in the drainage where I'd expect the snowpack is still thin, the basal facet problem is likely worse, and there's plenty of rocky starting zones that are hidden by all this fluffy new snow. We stuck to the lower half of the drainage and only skied steeper slopes that were low consequence and had easy escape routes.

New snow was well behaved - some slow moving loose snow slides in steeper terrain that were easy to stay ahead of. The skiing was fantastic on steeper and low angle terrain alike.