Stability in the W Bridgers that will not last

On a sunset tour we headed up to grab some low hanging fruit in the W Bridgers. We were shocked to find such a deep snowpack in the plains. Skiing a meadow off the valley floor from the North Cottonwood Canyon TH, we dug a pit at an elevation of approx. 5,800ft on a west aspect. The snowpack was 85cm deep, with this weekends new snowfall making up the top 45cm, the sun had affected the top 5cm creating a thin warmer layer and then surface crust as temperatures dropped. The bottom 40cm was a melted down, 4F hardness layer of weaker snow to the ground. At the moment the new snow appeared to be bonding well to the previous snowpack but it was very visible that this bottom layer was trending towards faceting and weakness. Our test result was ECTN 14. There was no breakage into the weak snow below the new snow. We skied a beautiful 25-30 degree pitch into the setting sun.