Observations from Johnson Canyon

We did a short tour in the Johnson Canyon area to scout conditons for an up coming course. New snowfall amounts ranged from 100-125cm in wind protected areas, the new snow had not begun to settle yet and was relatively low denisty. Breaking trail supported these conditions, the deep snow and no established snowpack underneath made movement slow. We expereinced minor cracking around our skin track, but did not see any cracks that indicated any signs of tension where we were hiking. Hand pits and pole probing revealed a relatively right side up snowpack and few hand shears results from storm instabilities, but nothing too surprising. No collapsing was noted on our tour today, but we were also in an area that had minimal to no existing snowpack before this storm, although we did not dig down to the Dec 8/9 snow.The weather cleared for a few minutes and we were able to look at surrounding terrain, wind texture was minimal in the canyon and no avalanches were observed. We stayed far away from anything remotely resembling avalanche terrain, and our greatest risk was a simple tumbled that could result in deep snow immersion. My camera decided to stop working, so no photos from today..