I spent the last 3 days guiding out of Kieth's Hut. We skied north aspect of Vantage, Aussie Couloir, Anniversary Glacier and the lower portion or Maiter's north face.

The storm ending ~April 8 has consolidated into 20-30 cm of 4f-1f, and is capped by a prominent crust on anything solar.

The storm ending 4/11 produced up to 15 cms of cold dry snow near 2000m. Light Southerly and Westerly winds drifted in areas of 30-40 cms. On solar aspects we were still skiing the crust but north aspects skied much better.

On Friday 4/12 we were ascending Matier's north ridge/face with the prospect of skiing the NW face. Recently developed wind slabs were sensitive, shallow, and discontinuous. While observing/testing the fresh wind slabs with hand shears, we had several hand shears fail on the April 8th interface on preserved SH. The SH seemed spatially discontinuous - only 3 hand shears revealed these weak grains out of 6 or 7 tests. However, this was enough to turn us around from continuing into the steeper, rockier, and higher consequence terrain higher on the ascent.

Steep, high elevation north faces were seeing some natural size 1 loose dry on Friday. All aspects, including N faces, below ~1800 meters were temperature affected by 1:00 pm on Friday.