Carson Pass

I toured out towards Frog Lake from the Carson Pass parking lot. At the beginning of the traihead surface hoar was glistening on N aspects and in shaded areas below tree line. There was ~15-20cms of fist hard new snow and about 60cm of HS.  As we traveled along we saw some wind effected snow but certainly not widespread. There was also small wind features sprinkled about in the landscape. I stepped on some of these features and only the overhanging snow would break off into chunks producing soft slabs. I dug a pit on NW aspect at 8600'. Snowpack was rightside up but there was signs of instability within my compression tests. Most concerning was 25cm down producing propagating results in my ECT, appeared to be failing on a mix of rimed PP and small graupel. The other concern was at the ground were CT and ECT collapsed.  The weather was nice all day with no wind at all, at the end of the day on the way out I noticed that some solar aspects were heating up and the surface snow was wet and cohesive. 

I dug a pit on NW aspect at 8600'. HS was 65cm with ~15-20cm of fist hard snow on the surface. Overall the snowpack was pretty uniform in grain size and type with some density changes as you went down, but for the most part right side up. At the bottom, there is a layer of facets on the ground but were wet and easily compressible; however, the facets still failed during compression tests. My compression tests revealed a few layers that showed resistent  planar results, but the one that was most concerning was about 25cms down. It failed twice on the ECT. The first one I saw a faint line after I completed the first test and stepped back away from the wall. I setup a second one and had clear results. Looked like the failure happened on a mix of rimed PP and very small graupel grains below the new snow.