Powderhouse Peak

I hiked up to the top of Powderhouse Peak today. The air temperatures were warm and were exacerbated by the overcast skies. The surface snow remained wet and compressible all the way up to 9000'. On the way up, I dug two pits, one at the bottom and one near the summit at 9300'. During my compression tests, in both pits, I had only one result in the pit near the bottom at 7850' on N aspect where there was failure on the basal facets scoring an ECTP12; otherwise there was no other remarkable results in either pit. The snow on the descent was cold to start then became greasy and eventually produced some pinwheels on ski cuts in steeper terrain as I lost elevation to the truck.  

I dug two pits today, One near the bottom and one near the summit to see the difference between the two. The first one was at 7850' on a N aspect and had about 65cms of total snow. On the surface was .5cm of wet compressible snow. Below that was 4F hard snow down to the Dec. 12th facet layer @ 35cm down. During the extended column test, it did collapse on the basal facets at tap 12 at the ground. As I progressed through the test I had an ECTN18 on the Dec. 12th layer. In my second pit @ 9300' on NW aspect, the surface snow was cold and moist. There was ~115cm of snow with large basal facets at the bottom ~3mm in size. During my ECT I had no remarkable results just an ECTN25 on the the Dec.12th layer @ 50cm down.