Panther Snow Conditions

We did a 2am start and dropped into a pretty big couloir at 9am. Everything was still cold and the snow from yesterday was light and dry. Underneath was a breakable crust from snowline (500m) to about 1000m. From here on the crust ranged from breakable in shade to slick supportive ice in areas that had sun yesterday. Above 1000m we observed widespread 1cm surface hoar crystals. Very large deep slab avalanches that likely released during last week's rain event were widespread in the area around Panther Mtn. Their frozen debris fields made travel challenging. The snow in the couloir was loose and dry and had filled in to about 40cm deep due to sluffing from the walls. No wind slab/affect observed. The fresh snow bonded well to the underlying crust on hand pull tests and ski cutting @ 9am.