Wind slabs on Red Lake Peak

Starting around 10:30 @ 7300', temps were below freezing, skies were overcast, and snow was falling (S-1). Winds were moderate to strong and snow was transporting all around us. On the beginning of the ascent, a frozen breakable melt freeze crust was present on solar aspects and was getting buried by in coming snow. Along the road up to Crater lake wind slabs were forming and abundant anywhere snow could collect. Throughout the tour we observed swirling tornados of snow near tree line and above tree line, snow was airbourne, turbulent, and cross loading all slopes in its path. We ski cut several locations of isolated areas of wind slabs, all were stiff at the surface and soft below. Hand and mitt pits displayed poor bonding below these stiffer windslabs and was planar and at times failing during isolation. The pit results showed some failure within compression test right below the Jan.22nd rain crust, but scored ECTX on this same layer. I performed a deep tap test on the DEC.11th and got no results. Our group decided not to go pass Crater lake as windslabs were clearly present and further travel was deemed unecessary within the Red Lake cirque. From there our group kept it conservative, riding back down the road to avoid skiing the breakable crust and aviod wind loaded slopes of windslabs.