McCloud lake bowl

Several times today on my tour up to the McCloud Bowl and Hollywood trees I was startled by a noticeable whoompf from suspect layers in the lower snowpack collapsing. So I stopped and dug. Every one of the collapses occurred in places with a stiffer slab and more deeply accumulated snow, likely wind compressed/ wind loaded snow. This one was below a convex rollover that promotes drifting.

On a NW aspect at 9370 ft.I found: 20 cm of F soft new snow over 50 cm of older 4F to F soft wind deposited snow created a slab that sat on two layers of depth hoar/ advanced facets with very little cohesion. Imagine a very soft F hand-hardness layer of sugary ice crystals. A quick compression test failed when I was isolating the column in the back.  It failed on the upper interface between the facets and the overlaying slab. It broke in the facets. CTV SP