Josh and I managed to conduct an exciting compression test with mostly unexciting results. Claudia enjoyed documenting. On the second to last strike of my shovel we had a failure on graupel in between two layers of dense snow. Through a regrettably poorly documented shovel shear test we also found clean shears in density changes in the upper snowpack and at the lower graupel layer. We mostly dug down to check out how the old facets were doing.
Pictured above are two serious and dedicated snow scientists testing whether or not 6 feet of snow will insulate the pwl from a cold wet smack on a shovel. Pictured below are the persistent weak grains in question.