We skied primarily south facing terrain but found a small gully at 10,320' with a NE facing wall on which to dig. We were looking for crusts formed during our recent warmer-than-usual temps and wanted to look at the basal facets. We found the expected large grain early season facets on the ground (dry, with grain sizes 2 to 3 mm), but were surprised to find reactive small grain facets sitting on top of the larger basal facets. ECTP 22 on these small grains, see video. We did not find any melt freeze crusts in this pit. Our best guess is the near surface facets formed during the cold temps the first week of December, and were then covered with dense snow on Dec 6th. It's one of multiple suspect layers in an upside down, shallow snowpack with terrible structure.
Snow depth was 75 cm where we dug, but was a whopping 175 cm just 10 meters downhill, where graupel likely rolled down and pooled in the gully. See pic.
