New Snow and Wind on the West Shore

We toured up to Hidden Peak today to look at conditions post storm cycle.  Recent storms since Sunday night have deposited 160cm of storm snow through this past week, pretty impressive.  Recent gale force winds with the latest storm did create some wind texture on the snow surface with ski pen of around 20cm, while boot pen was well over waist deep.  Below this surface wind texture, the recent storm snow was "right side up" with lighter snow on top getting progressively more dense down towards the base.  We targeted snowpack tests at the old snow/new snow interface and the old Nov 9 facet layer.  We could not find the Dec 11 facet layer and snowpack tests did not show any weakness here.  We did have multiple tests show weakness at the Nov 9 facet layer showing that propagation remains possible if you cause a failure down at this depth.  We saw very little other evidence of instabilities in this area today.  Winds decreased into the afternoon and wind slabs that we encountered on small test slopes were stubborn and small.