Elephant's Hump

We traveled around the Elephant's Hump area today. Conditions were variable with a mix of melt freeze crusts and sugary faceted snow in shaded aspects. This area received a trace amount of snow during last night's weather event. Some graupel was mixed in with this new snow. The height of snow in this area is generally around 115 cm. I dug a pit on a NW aspect at 8400 because I haven't been here in a while. Things looked normal as of late with 6 inches of near surface facets at the top. I did a compression test and got a CT22RP at 47cms down on the January 1, rain crust . There was facets on top of this crust that resulted in a planar shear quality. By mid-afternoon some solar aspects softened up but only in direct sunlight. The ride down was surprisingly good as we stayed in a shaded protected area. No signs of instability were observed throughout the day.