Digging in Bradleys

Yesterday I dug a pit just for fun on the backside of Bradley's (7800 ft, NW asp). I found about 30cm of mixed forms (facets, rounds, and grains in-between) overlying 5cm of facets (2-3mm), over a 15cm thick melt-freeze-crust/facet complex. Some of the facets were starting to look like depth hoar.

I got a non-propagating result (ECTN22 down 30cm on the facet layer), followed by a propagating result (ECTP23 down 30cm on the facet layer) in the same pit. This was a good reminder about spatial variability even on a small scale.

Pole probing around the area there were places I could feel the facet layer, and places where the lowermost part of the snowpack felt more like a solid crust. This pattern seemed aspect dependent (crust-dominant on steeper solar-ish aspects, facets in shaded areas or north aspects), but I didn't poke around enough to know for sure.