I dug a couple good pits in my favorite, representative locations. Yup, the faceted weak layer from the January-February drought is still there and still weak and still propagating fractures without too much provocation. Don't like it. The weakest pit I had was on sheltered, north facing opening about halfway down the sneak ridge down between West Monitor and South Monitor, which you can accesses very safely. My compression tests were collapsing on medium hand taps to medium elbow taps 5-15. My extended column tests were propagating on the faceted snow 60 cm down from the January-February drought. Out of four tests, they propagated on 11, 15, 20 and 21 taps, which means that an easy tap from the elbow to an easy tap from the shoulder. My propagation saw tests both propagated 25/90, which means that I cut 25 cm across a 90 cm column before the fracture propagated to the end of the column. In other words, it's definitely possible to trigger an avalanche on this layer and it's going to be big enough to be quite serious. I also dug another snowpit on a west-northwest facing slope at 9,700' (not plotted here) and got similar results but with harder taps and slightly deeper. As I traveled, I regularly probed the snowpack with the handle end of my ski pole and I could feel this weak layer almost everywhere I probed. In other words, it's widespread. Bottom line: I'm staying off anything steeper than 30 degrees in steepness (including locally connected terrain especially above) on all slopes that face the shady half of the compass, E-N-W.

Photo 1&2 no tracks in South Monitor but an hour later, one lone skier jumped in without incident. Photo 2, one lone ski track visible in Meadow Chutes. Photo 4, No takers in West Monitor.