clear and cold

is this classic montana or what?  we go from mid 20's deep powder, get hit with some late afternoon rime, then the wind comes ripping in, bringing in a high pressure, super cold front.  in less than 24 hours we have gone from deep pow skiing, to wind blown, soft snow, where wearing all your clothes is necessary. 
fortunately, the wind did not totally rip up the skiing. in fact, it stayed quite nice. 
i spent the day off the resort, in the canyon area, skiing mostly low angle trees, but occasionally venturing onto steeper slopes.  we did not dig a pit, as the cold temps kept us desirous of constant movement.  we had nothing but great skiing conditions, and felt very safe throughout the day.  the biggest impediment to nearly perfect skiing was snow debris off trees that had hardened up like avy debris.  it was easy to recognize, but once buried, might trip up many a skier like a snow snake. 
we could feel the tiny rime layer right at the top of the snowpack from the end of the day on tuesday.  and already surface hoar is forming on top of this crust.  so, yet another layer to be wary of in the future.  i kind of get the feeling that backcountry conditions will be relatively stable, but with hidden pockets of instability.  although this is often the case, with our many buried and super dangerous ice layers, the possibility of small slabs stepping down to these layers is of high concern.  often these hidden pockets are impossible to know.  but it helps to stay away from convex or concave slopes, rollovers onto steep terrain, or anything that seemed to be wind loaded. 
which brings up the concept of "spacial variability".  what does this mean and how important is it? 
i have long had trouble grasping exactly what this means.  but on my trip to sun valley area over new years, we did a short tour near the summit of galena pass.  they have an absolutely horrible and shallow snowpack, even for there.  but we dug two pits, less than 500 yards apart, one approximately 300 feet lower in elevation, both on the same aspect, and similiar slope angles.  why did we dig two pits so similiar.  well, mostly they were easy to dig, due to the shallow snowpack, and we were with a snow nerd , ex of these parts.  the first failed on an "extended column test" on the 16th hit, the 6th from the elbow, Q2.  no propogation.  so a poor quality failure, under moderate, nearing a high pressure hit, that did not move thru the snowpack.  RELATIVELY SAFE.  in the second pit, we had a clean failure Q1, at ECT 13, that completely propogated across the snowpack.  RELATIVELY DANGEROUS!  this is a great example of "spacial variability.  two spots, about the same, but in just slightly different places. one seems safe, the other not. 

how important is it?  read ted's comments from the last blog, and look at the youtube video of the fatality in cook city.  snowmobiliers all over, but he hit the sweet spot.  

okay, enough.  with all that said, we ended our day, somehow on top of a highly visable, beautiful line facing the valley and the base of the ski area.  staying away from a rollover, a convexity and the steeper skiers left line, we minimized our rish, and skied into the open terrain and had perfect turns.  should we have skied this slope? maybe not, but it did not move, and the turns were the best of the day.