East Peak

Started to skin up to Smokers Bowl but decided to turn around because of the vis and wind. Instead skin'd up to the 2100m line on the southern aspect of EP. Dug out a pit until about 20cm below the early Dec rain crust and did a CT. No reaction until 6th hit on medium, got a slight collapse on a hore layer at 50cm from the surface, nothing else. Further test we got a propagation/crack not all the way thru (hard on 7 hit) at the 80-100 mark (see pic of the line lower in the column, I defined it more for the photo), but nothing else on that layer. This layer was later discovered to be a sugar/facet snow layer. I pulled on the whole column and got it to break off the Dec rain crust with moderate force, it took additional force to cause a break on the 80/100 sugar layer. The whole column was bonded pretty well, except the top new ~50cm of snow. Total depth was approx 180cm on a 45 degree slope. The wind was very strong out of the S/SW. Temp -4c to -5c. We decided based on the vis to ski down into the trees and back inbonds. The few 100 meters of turns we got were in great snow. No evidence of an avalanches or movement.

Very windy from the S/SW