Today while ski touring around we wanted to evaluate how much differently any weak layers in the snowpack would react with surface varying degrees of surface consolidation or lack thereof. We dug in a few places between 9700' and 10350' on W through north, in areas exposed to wind and previous deposition as well as in protected forest.

In our fist pit, a somewhat loaded one, we had reactivity (ECTP12) down 65cm on at the interface of small grain facets, likely buried diurnal NSF. This same layer in sheltered areas only yielded hard ECTN or broken score results. A pit with a somewhere in middle degree of surface consolidation, or mild but still some consolidation, yielded ECTN15 on that same layer (in that location down 45cm) but it propagated 4/5 of the way across the block... The NSF layer is certainly the primary concern on northerlies but the basal facet layer is certainly still there, but seems far less reactive and it is stongly possible/likely an avalanche would step down to this layer.