Elephant's Hump

First, I'd like to start that is great to finally have snow. Merry Christmas to us all!
     On the drive out  the rain snow line started around 7700 feet on Luther pass the snow continued through Hope Valley to the top of Carson pass. Our intention was go to Frog Lake but the sno-park parking lot has not been plowed yet. We deferred to Elephants Hump to get our observation. Winter like weather all day with light to moderate snowfall with light winds. In general, there was 40 to 60 cm of snow in this area. The snowpack was a little upside down more kind of like a Oreo cookie. With wet dense snow at the ground, 15cm of fist hard snow in the middle and moist four finger snow above that. I dug two pits, one on a NW aspect at 8400 feet and another on a W aspect at 8000 feet. Both pits shared the same structure. Compression test results did show some signs of weakness. Scoring a CTN 12, ECTN 12 on the fist hard layer approximately 25cm down. There was sudden collapse in this result but, with poor Q3 shear quality. Additional taps would just lead to progressive compression through the soft layer in the center but never propagating. 

 

Ski cuts on stepper slopes did not produce unstable results.