We found decent snow today on a treed NW aspect between 9800'-8000' on slopes up to ~33 degrees. Below 8000' and on more solar aspects, there was an obvious breakable crust that formed overnight after the sunny skies and warm temps yesterday. We consciously avoided those aspects and any areas off ridgelines that were steep and possibly wind-loaded. We observed minor wind effect on a ridgeline at 9800', but no cracking or whumpfing while skinning across. Ridgetop winds were generally light from the WNW with a little bit of blowing snow. It was snowing lightly to moderately for the duration of our tour, with only about an inch of accumulation.
A 105 cm deep snow pit dug on a WNW aspect at 9800' confirmed the primary avalanche problem we're dealing with - low probability (and trending lower it seems) but high consequence if you were able to trigger a slide that stepped down to involved the whole snowpack. We got an ECTN 33 on a slight weak layer at 50-55 cm in the snowpack, coinciding with a slight change in snowpack hardness from fist to four fingers. Following the test, we used a shovel to dislodge the whole snowpack in the pit, which stayed together as a cohesive block above the 5 cm of large, angular basal facets. Even though we weren't able to get it to break at the base during our ECT, it was a little disconcerting to see the whole block come off as one when prodded with the shovel.
Overall, we felt better about the snowpack then we did a couple weeks ago, but that lingering persistent slab/deep slab issue remains in the back of our minds when making decisions of where to ride.