Went for a ski up the Flanders drainage in Hyalite today. The day was punctuated by light winds and heavy snowfall.
On the skin in, we noted numerous D1 storm slab avalanches about 15cm down in the new snow on many aspects and elevations. Approaching a ridgeline, we experienced a shooting crack that propagated a very small slide in slightly wind affected snow. We dug an ECT on a SE facing aspect at 9000ft. We were unable to get propagation. Snow totals appeared to be higher than forecasted, with 60cm of new snow as of about 12:30. By the time we ripped skins, the area had received an additional 10cm of snow, putting totals around 60-70cm of low density snow on top of a stout melt freeze crust on the aspect we were skiing.
we did not observe any cracking collapsing or wumphing in buried weak layers, nor signs of avalanches on those layers. The new snow had very low SWE.