Quick report
Skinned up to the snow field around 8650ft near the top of the Northwest trees of the Castle Peak bowl. The slope angle starts to become avalanche terrain here, entering 32-34 degrees. We followed the ridge along the Castle Peak Trail and crossed over to the leeward Northern side near 8400ft. We found deeper wind deposited snow with a few isolated pockets of firmer surface slabs closer to the ridgeline snowdrifts, causing us to drop a bit lower into the trees. Moving away from the ridgeline up to the snow field we found softer snow and less evidence of wind slabs, but decided to dig a pit to observe if any reactivity. We dug down 300cm (9.8ft) from snow surface to investigate the February 10th facet layer. The probe mostly stopped at hard snow at this depth. Snow hardness test (from snow surface): Fist to 100cm, four fingers 100cm-130cm, one finger 130cm-180cm. The firm snow seemed to begin at this depth of 180cm from snow surface (6ft). We attempted an extended column test, but did not have a saw so used a ski and wound up breaking the column before being able to tap. The column chunk broke at about 110cm. The upper layers of wind deposited snow seemed unreactive.