Powder on Powderhouse.

I toured up Powderhouse starting around 10am this morning. Wind and snow was intense when I showed up, there was about 3-4" of new snow @7600' sitting on top of a rain soaked layer below it.Throughout the ascent there was periods of intense winds and blowing snow that brought visibility down to a couple hundred feet. These intense moments would fill up the skin track in front of me fast. I climbed to 9200' just short of the summit and found an isolated location to dig and look at the new snow. At this elevation there was 45cm of new snow sitting on top of a firm 5cm layer that was more likely dense from wind, not rain. This interface did show planar results, CT sp@ tap 30. I performed an ECT and got ECTP 29. I repeated two more ECTs and did not get propagation in either, only ECTNs. At this point I was on my third jacket and decided to pack up shop and head down. On the ride down the snow was great riding but the storm slab was stacking up, I had several ski cut results approaching steep rocks, drops and other micro features. There was lots of snow movement during these cuts. Sometimes there was both wind and storm components at the same time. Happy holidays.