Stormy conditions on Luther Pass

       We toured up the east side of Luther pass today. At the beginning of the trailhead around 1000 there was a clear melt freeze crust and rain runnels on the surface. The crust was breakable and continued till about 8200'. From there open pow fields were soft and unconsolidated until you got near the drip line of any tree, there the snow was rough and frozen over. As we climbed up snowfall was intermittent as the storm was rolling in. At the top we stopped on a NW aspect @ 9200' and dug a pit. The snow pack was right side up and well consolidated. During our compression test we had a planar result about 60cm down and had small angular grains at the interface. This prompted us to move on to an extended column test but it resulted only with ECTN on this layer. We also attempted a PST on this layer and it also showed no results; however, this interface was paper thin and hard to trace. At 1300 the snow really started falling as we were cleaning up our pit area; for a brief period, graupel started falling but was also rolling around the surface from the wind. As we finished our hike up, snow continued to fall at a steady rate (S-2) and the wind was transporting the snow towards N aspects. The ride down consisted of good but variable conditions as we would periodically encounter the melt freeze crust grabbing our boards, especially as we lost elevation and got closer to the truck. No other signs of recent instability was observed during our tour.