We went for a tour towards 10,420' this afternoon to take a look at the new snow, and to see if the facets formed from the Jan-Feb drought were beginning to become moist. We were met with a few inches of soft, damp powder at the snow surface, which laid atop a supportable moist old snow surface. This made for easy skinning aside from some skin glop. We stopped to dig a pit on a NE facing slope at 9700'. We found a height of snow of 175cm, with 10cm of new snow. We found the facets (formed Jan-Feb) 42 cm beneath the snow surface (55-133 cm above the ground). The facets in this location were rounding, 3 mm large, and were moist enough to make a snowball (see video).

While the rounding and moist nature of these facets might be an indication that we are slowly moving in the right direction, we could continue to see avalanches on this weak layer. The amount of water moving through the upper snowpack has created uncertainty regarding how this weak layer will perform day to day. Only time will help heal this instability in our unusual late-season snowpack, and patience is what it deserves from us.