Still Dry in Portal

Rode up to the head of Portal Creek to area beneath Eaglehead Mtn and then around to the ridge overlooking Hidden Lakes. The trail is very low snow near the Portal Creek trailhead and the snow was wet to the ground beneath a stout crust. As we got higher up the coverage increased and even sunny slopes only had a couple inch thick surface crust over dry snow. On shady slopes there was still dry snow at the surface. We dug on a N aspect at 9400 ft just north of Eaglehead Mtn. The snowpack was 180 cm deep. We got an ECTX, but the facets near the ground were still soft and sheared off cleanly when pulling on the column. 

We had no signs of instability today. The only avalanche we saw was a large slide on Eaglehead that had been previously reported over two weeks ago.