Quick report
I went back to Bishop Bowl today to work on my tan and get a more focused assessment of the crust layer I'd seen the weakness in yesterday. Surprisingly, a second pit just 20ft away from the first, on an identical aspect (10,200', NE, 25deg, HS 80cm) had the addition of the same crust/facet/crust sandwich towards the bottom of the snowpack that we've been seeing further north, plus the same crust layer at 30cm that I'd seen in the previous pit. Today I was able to perform two CTs and an ECT, all three of which caused a failure in the basal facets at 10 taps. None of the crust layers produced any results in this spot, even when encouraged with 30+ forces. The basal facets here are actually starting to bond, and the failure in that layer was uneven, collapsing on the airy absence of snow at the ground. Digging through the lower facet/crust layers by hand, they seemed to be gaining strength and icing up, maybe having gone through a melt-freeze.