Wind Slabs Behind The Throne

The Throne is wind scoured down to dirt in many places on the east face, making that face completely unskiable. We toured up to behind and above the throne (west of it) in hopes of finding better snow on the northeast aspect. Snow was extremely variable touring up, alternating between wind slab and wind scoured. Saw some shooting cracks on a wind slab at ~8500 feet on a 30 degree slope and quickly backed off.

We dug a pit at 8500 feet on the northeast aspect and got a ECT12 result that propagated all the way across on a layer of facets at about 140cm from the ground, below a thin (1cm) hard crust at ~145 cm from ground.  Above that thin hard crust was ~15cm of fist soft snow and then a ~10cm wind crust on top of that.

Very funky/variable snow all the way down, mostly highly wind affected.