Observation: Empire Pass

I was curious what the last few nights of cold temperatures and warm days did to the snow around Park City. I walked from Empire Pass along the ridge over to Daly Chutes within the Deer Valley ski area. On the north-facing slopes along Empire Pass the snowpack is about a foot deep. During my walk there was a quick burst of snow that accumulated 1" of low-density snow on top of the old snow surface from 3:30-4:30PM. The old snow surface was a 1cm temperature crust. Below that crust was 5-inches of loose snow. The layer was weak relative to the crust above but consisted of mostly small grain rounding facets and was moist- I could easily form a snowball with the layer. In 2 extended column tests I had easy-failures but non-propagating results just below the crust (ECTN1 and ECTN4).