Large surface hoar on Donner Ridge

We travelled on a wide variety of aspects and elevations looking for decent skiing in the Donner ridge/Euer valley area.  Surface hoar was widespread in the area, some protected locations had impressive 15mm crystals.  Yesterday's rain and wet snow has led to formation of a variety of surface crusts, with varying supportability.  Above 7k' there was soft faceted snow under the surface crust, below 7k the upper snowpack felt dense and wet.  We found slick, barely edgeable conditions on wind scoured W and NW aspects in the morning, by 1pm W aspects were starting to melt, with sticky surface snow.  N and NE aspects above 7500' had only a weak surface crust, and still held decent skiing.  We mostly stuck to simple low angle terrain due to the marginal skiing conditions and did not observe any signs of instability on our tour.