Cold Front Brings Snow & Strong Wind

The recent storm snow seemed to be bonding well with underlying layers in the Smith Basin area today. We found no significant results in our two snow pit profiles on both a S and NE facing slope at 2250m at treeline. We saw a size 1.5 loose wet avalanche from either yesterday or the day before out of one of the south facing avalanche slopes above the groomed trail on the way in. We also noticed some older windslabs that had likely come down during last week's storm. There was about 2-5cm of new snow from the morning flurries that was mostly large graupel type snow crystals (see photo). Around 2pm a cold front hit and we noticed a rapid 5C drop in temperature and strong easterly winds picked up suddenly.