Weak Snow, Whumfing, and Warming on Stoney Ridge

We chose Stoney Ridge for its low angle sheltered terrain and to check out how the Jan 4 crust/facet combo is changing with the recent snow on top of it. As soon as we left the parking lot, we could feel weak loose snow (facets) under the recent snow with every pole plant. We stopped at about 7000 ft and dug a quick hand pit. The facets we found there were large, loose, and sugary. We started to isolate an Extended Column Test but it failed as soon as we started cutting the back (ECTPV). We continued up staying in terrain less steep than 30 degrees with no other steeper terrain above it. 

We got our first whumpf as we skinned into a meadow at about 7400 ft. We got one more on the E facing slope leaving the meadow before turning onto a more SE facing slope. We could still feel the weak sugary snow with our poles on the E aspects, but we did not feel it on the S and SE aspects. These more sun-exposed areas did have a thin breakable crust on them. As we neared the top of Stoney Ridge, we moved back onto a N facing aspect and triggered several larger whumpfs in the rocky (but still low angle) terrain. 

We dug another snowpit and got more unstable test results with some tests failing before we even tapped on them (ECTPV, CTV, ECTP 16, and PST 25/100 END). All of these signs of instability confirmed our decision to stay on low angle slopes as we skied down. We also regrouped before anything that looked like the terrain might rollover to make sure that we did not stray into any pockets of steeper terrain. We did notice that the snow surface started to become wet and sticky on all but the true N aspects on the descent at around 1 pm.