Observation: Cardiff Fork

Dug a pit below the summit of Cardiff peak and found about 70cm of snow. The snow surface was faceted, with about 55 cm of 4 to 1 finger hardness below it, to about 10cm of fist hardness depth hoar. I got a CT16, CT17, and an ECT 21. All of the tests fully propagated and had some energy, breaking out 10cm from the ground on the depth hoar. People have been talking about the depth hoar rounding, and in the area I dug, there was some rounding, but that is changing with a shallow snowpack and lack of new snow. In the lower elevations I found that the facets were rounding, but the higher in elevation I went the facets were drier and rounding was less present.

There was a fair amount of wind affected snow on more exposed slopes. The more protected slopes had some supportable skiing with a few inches of loose faceted on the surface that sluffed easily. I also experienced greenhousing and glopping of the skins.