Quick report
I lent a trucker my extra snow shovel at the Carson Pass SnoPark this morning so he could fill his cooler with snow. He was using a wrench before that to hack at the frozen crust. With my old shovel he quickly got past the shallow refreeze to softer snow to keep his energy drinks cool. I headed out towards Elephant's Back shortly after that and the significant melt that has occurred in this area in the ten days since my last visit was obvious. Following the blue diamond markers quickly leads to a small pond across the trail that wasn't there before and ideally wouldn't show up for another month or two.
At 8:40am I dug a quick pit on a nearly flat but slightly east facing aspect around 8600'. There was approximately 5 inches of pencil - 1 finger hard crust over unconsolidated snow below. I had to avoid a few more dry patches as I skinned towards Elephant's Back. Much of the terrain generally tilts west on this part of the tour and stayed firm in the morning. The dry hike to Elephant's Graveyard has grown signficantly over the last week and the glide cracks have expanded as well.
The upper bowl had decent corn around 9:30 but it grew softer and less supportable in the lower pitch with quite a few obstacles as well. There were several areas of open streams with thin snow bridges near the bottom where I transitioned. The snow on a largely south facing slope at 8300' at 9:45am around where I transitioned was fully wet and unsupportable. Boot pen was adventurous but ski pen was fine. I skinned back below Elephant's Back bowl which has solid coverage but isn't super smooth. I descended more north facing terrain to old road.