Took a venture into steep nasty terrain off pioneer ridge today ( not recommended ) Seeing the usually suspects of 10cm melt freeze crust just above the ground. Followed by 40-60cm of faceting snow of defferent dergees. Slight crusts and dirt layers still present from our three significant storm events. However the pack lacks enough structure and energy for them to really matter much. Any test with enough structure and energy to collapse ad/or propigate are still failing on the giant facets above the crust'

One interesting note however are the many facetalanches and the hard shell they are building over the weak snow below them as they slide and refreeze. In many cases these old sloughs will support human weight. They feel like a hard wind under foot and act the same way in ski pole penitration test. Of course you cannot isolate a column for compression and ECT tests they fall right in the pit. I found it interesting enough to note here