March 11, 2012, East Peak Blower on Crust

My friend Paul and I reluctantly opted to avoid the potential road closure/delayed opening at Paradise, as well as the probably higher avy danger and decided to check out some non-lee slopes near Crystal, which seemed to have received higher than average snowfall compared to stevens and snoqualmie. Ended up settling on East Peak area, and did some laps in gladed terrain on westerly aspects. telemetry seemed spot on when we got there, with 6-8" of new on the crust. snowed an inch an hour most of the time we were there, and new snow depth seemed to be closer to a foot of blower when we left. dug a pit at approx 5500', west facing, 28 degree slope in gladed terrain, which was our target skiing terrain. isolated a column and did our best at faking an extended column test. Could not get any of the layers to move in the top 3' or so of snowpack that we tested. we kept a close eye on conditions and skied relatively conservatively, though we could still not avoid the inevitable and constant face shots and envelopements ;D. definitely sloughing occuring, especially on slopes over 30 degrees, but without incident. saw some tracks in a south facing aspect in cement basin that looked really nice - good call :). slabby snow on the ridge top, and significant cornices. stopped snowing and opened up just as we were getting ready to ski back to the car - even saw a piece of Rainier before we dropped in for another round of powderfacing and whiterooming on crust in the alpenglow 8). pics when the camera is charged up.