Divide Peak

I took a spin up to Divide today, and saw a mixed bag of conditions. A pit on a south aspect at 9300’ gave me HS 160 and ECTP29, failing on facets about 50cm from the ground. A couple spots in the upper pack failed in shear, but were unresponsive in a compression test, and when I pushed over my extended column, it stayed intact. But most of the nice things I have to say about the snow are qualitative observations, which have pretty limited value.
I observed a couple older (1-2 week) naturals on E/ESE aspects in the Divide basin, and newer (1-3 days) naturals on the NE side of Divide and an east aspect at the head of the Maid of the Mist basin. The older slides were noticeably larger than the newer ones, but my sample size was quite small, so I’m not sure what I can infer from that. Ski conditions today were excellent.