March goes out like a Lion!

Followed tail end of storm to Plateau this morning, the longest commute I have ever had. Billie's Mountain was a minefield of stuck and jack-knifed semis, but I was able to thread the needle and sneak by. This was well worth the drive, 12' new snow sitting on indestructable mf crust on all aspects. We decided last night to visit Electric Bowl, and that was a good choice. Weather was overcast with light snow and light winds when we arrived. By the time we left NW winds had increased and started transporting snow onto east facing leeward slopes, the sun was shining, and the sky was clear. Questionable bond of new snow to old surface because snow did not start falling in Sanpete County until sometime Sunday afternoon, and cold temps on Fri and Saturday had already set up crusts. As we thought, sluffing on steeper slopes started our day, and first steep run I entrained enough snow to bring out fragile soft slab in new snow that had a hard time propagating far, 12' X 20' (See before Pic). Skied next run on lower angle slopes with minimal sluffing. My hypothesis was that as weather cleared and new snow got some time to settle and a little sun on it, slab would gain strength faster that new snow old snow bond. Final run supported hypothesis (see after Pic). Steve triggered another soft slab 12' x 100' wide that got deep enough he wisely exited right, and Diane also triggered another soft slab a little smaller on a ski cut. Based on what we saw today, and with wind picking up, things are most likely very sensitive off exposed ridgelines on any loaded steep slope. Other than a few small sluffs on very steep slopes, no natural activity was seen on the way home.
Chopped out crust layers to check for weaknesses within that layer, and could not get it to fail. new snow will settle and poor bond may improve with time, but wonder about tomorrows warming. Hard to tell it is the first of April, keep it coming

South Willow Creek, worth repeating

Steve and I returned to South Willow Creek today and found very good skiing on sheltered north facing slopes. 12" new snow from last Fri/Sun series sitting on a zipper mf crust that would collapse on CT, but just not sensitive to ski cuts. Weaker layer Dave found 18"-20" down is now 25" down in this area and is a mix of graupel 2-3 mm and facets that would only fail when I was really pounding on it. We both felt that we would have a very hard time penetrating this far into the pack, and since 48 hours have past we were comfortable with stability in this area.
No collapsing or cracking and we, on purpose, used uptrack to stomp around on steep angle terrain to see how it would react. The only activity I was able to trigger was minor sluffing with ski cut on very steep rollovers that exist all over on smaller scales. No natural activity noted anywhere.
Started out clear and cool this am, but around 11 cloud deck moved in and it remained very cool all day. Sun did come out on very long exit shot, so to add to epic snow conditions we had backlit sun just for more smiles.
South facing side of canyon crusted and welded in place, winds had been busy from the north but only affect the very tops of the ridges. Killer skiing for middle of March, winter is not over yet.