Consolidated Snowpack on Miller Mountain

Dug a pit around 9700' on a WNW shaded aspect below a couloir on Miller Mountain in Cooke City. We found ~95cm snowpack, with 5-10" of lower-density fresh snow. We dug to the ground and found a consistent and firm snowpack all the way down, didn't find any facets at the ground. Isolated cracking, ECTN25 ~20-25cm down, below the thick melt-freeze crust from the warm-up immediately before this week's snow. The fresh snow had sluffed out on most chutes before we got there (likely during the storm) but we saw very little sluff triggered by our skiing

The fresh snow skied great on shaded aspects that hadn't been affected by wind. Non-shaded snow surfaces were definitely getting wet by 1 pm, the sun felt hot, but we didn't observe any wet slides before we left. The snow on the ride out was very wet, with watery-slush puddles on the lower parts of the trail.