No drifts in the new snow

Took a quick trip up Beehive Basin to the prayer flags, down into the meadows towards Bear Basin and returned the way we came.

Found around 4" of new snow from yesterday. There were scoured areas near the ridgeline on the west face, but we didn't find any cohesive wind drifts.

We dug two quick pits on the east facing terrain dropping towards Bear Basin. In our upper pit (NE aspect, 9200 ft), we found a layer of small facets (1 mm) buried a foot down, under the snow that has fallen in the past week. It didn't react in our Extended Column Test (ECTN25), but we hadn't had any reports of these facets previously, so it was a little bit surprising. We dug again, a little lower (~8900) to see if we would find it again, but it didn't exist in that location (instead there was a stout melt-freeze crust under this weeks snow). 

There was a thin, breakable, melt-freeze crust under yesterday's 4" of new snow on any slope that wasn't a little shaded. Slopes with a northward tilt, or in the shade of trees, didn't have the breakable crust. 

Despite high clouds, the snow surface was starting to get damp in the early afternoon and there were roller balls beneath our ski tracks. We saw a fresh wet loose slide on an low elevation west facing slope in Bear Basin.

Otherwise, we saw no signs of instability.