Jan 29, 2013, Mt. Snoqualmie trees

Got in a brief dawn patrol up through the trees climber's left of the phantom this morning before the rain was due to set in.  We found variably deep and entirely wet powder, perhaps 10" - 3' atop the crust.  We were constantly alert for stability issues, but found almost none.  Snowpack was generally a pretty uniform density (wet and heavy and reasonably cohesive), with a lighter-density layer about 3" thick occasionally palpable somewhere in the middle of the heavy snow - so the snowpack wasn't as upside-down as we were worried it might be.  We saw a couple isolated warning signs - slabby chunks falling on our skis as we traversed, a couple slabbish releases that ran a couple feet beneath our kickturns - but in general skinning and skiing produced zero movement or disturbance. 
This heavy snow made for reasonably energetic skinning, but far from the worst the NW provides.  Not so bold as to ignore today's red rose entirely, we never left the trees, and stripped our skins as we approached treeline.  The ski down was shockingly fun - we were expecting mashed potatoes, but all but the bottom 100' skied well.  Tree bombs were a minor hassle in places, but mostly ignorable.  We stomped on and generally abused a few small convexities on the way down and got nothing for our efforts. 
Nice to get a fun and apparently safe day during a wet NW storm.