Some powder is still surviving from the wind, sun, and warming

Strong west wind in the morning kept the snow from warming up too much. There were nice wind-blown drifts of powder in the alpine, but by midday sun-exposed slopes were starting to get wet and sticky. We saw a lot of avalanche terrain and surprisingly little avalanche activity, except one single size 2 avalanche in a north-facing slide path that would have been triggered in the afternoon by warming. We dug a quick pit in cutblock at 1600 m and got a notable snowpack test result (ECTP14) on a 30 cm deep surface hoar layer, but this layer did not seem to be producing avalanches today.