Round Top

Another mild day at Carson Pass, with facets and/or surface hoar on the surface of cold slopes, and a breakable melt-freeze crust on warm slopes. Snowpack tests indicated the weak layer down 8-10" from the surface could be a problem with additional loading.  I couldn't find locations with a continuous enough weak layer at the ground for large column tests, so I had to use small column tests to target that layer.

I went to two different E aspect  locations near the pin drop to perform PSTs on the facets at the ground, but there was too much vegetation and/or too many rocks in that layer to effectively drag my saw through. I could isolate small enough columns without objects interrupting that layer to perform Deep Tap Tests, and they all failed with hard taps and sudden collapse fracture character (I could not trigger that layer with Compression Tests, as it had 80cm of dense snow above it in both locations). The facets at the ground were 4f hard, moist, and easy to clump in my hand. The graupel/facet layer down 20cm produced sudden planar results using Compression Tests.  Most cold slopes I traveled on had either surface hoar or small facets on the surface.