I stopped to look at the snow, and when I was done with my test pit I turned around to see that Otto's pit was just as big and as deep as mine. Unfortunately, he also found weak faceted or sugary snow in his pit. The base layer dosen't look all that good anymore, and a forecast week of high pressure isn't going to help things much.

Otto's pit clearly shows a fairly weak shallow snowpack plagued by sugary faceted snow. The weakest snow is the top few inches comprised of grapple and newly formed small-grained facets called near surface facets. It's pretty fun to ski in this soft re-crystallizedpowder, but it is a bit slippery on the ascent track. A layer consisting of larger grained facets (+1mm) is on the October/November interface and capped by a thin and deteriorating melt/freeze crust. His ECT test proved positivefor propagation, failing just below the M/F crust on six taps from the shoulder (ECTP26 Q2)

We made our way to the top of Pt.9248, dug another pit with similar layering and crumbly faceted snow on a north facing slope a couple hundred feet below the ridge. We decided to try a few turns down into the slope. It wasn't long before my turns began washing out and I was dropping through the entire shallow snowpackto the rocks below. Otto found himself swimming in loose sugary faceted snow, and I also began to wallow around as I readied myself for the arduous climb out of the steep slope in loose structureless snow....

The first photo shows the poor coverage in Rock Bowl and the summit of Pt. 9248. The secondis the similar snowpit, with a bit more October snow on the ground. The snow on the steep slope below this was weak and faceted throughout...

I've noticed a fairly dramatic change in the snow after only a couple clear dry nights, and can only imagine the deterioration likely to occur in our shallow snow with next week's forecast sustained high pressure system.