Same story different day.  Weak snow abounds.  Structure is horrible.  Almost every slope that has wind blown snow above this *#%@@$ snow collapsed on approach.  I took some time to dig next to one of these collapses and started to find some interesting results.  The current theory about slope stability after a collapse is that initially things get weaker and then over time strength increases.  Today's test results support the first half of this theory.  The side of the pit that had already failed produced consistently lower CT and ECT scores than the side that had not failed.  More on this below.

The weakest snow is just below the rime crust where I was still able to pick out intact SH.  This sits on top of F hard facets at about 66cm from the ground.  The SH was the failure layer in the collapse and you can see in the above pic that the crack ends right where the SH meets the upper part of the faceted layer.  On the right side of the pit (the side that did not collapse initially) this is also the first layer that failed with stability tests. 

The really interesting part is the consistently lower, ECTPV and CT3, results that happened on the collapsed side.  Not only was it consistently weaker but it was now failing 8-10cm lower well within the faceted layer.  There may actually be more factors at play here like one side was just weaker than the other or maybe one side has more load on top but cool stuff nonetheless. 

I'm gonna try to force myself to overlook the *#%@@$ skiing and go back to this spot tomorrow to get data on the other half of this theory, the strengthening part.

All of this stuff is cool but the bottom line is that once we get new snow, steep slopes will avalanche.  Those that currently have some sort of slab on them will hold more snow before they slide and make bigger avalanches.