Winds and afternoon snow at Elephants Hump

Windy day at Elephant's Hump, with snow and limited visibility in the afternoon. The 1-2" of new snow that fell by our departure at 2pm made for surprisingly good skiing on untracked slopes. We traveled on E and N aspects, and consistently found facets under the surface crust. 

Pic 1: Only 120cm of snow here. Dec 12th crust at the bottom, and Jan 4th in the middle. New facets in between two crusts at the surface. A few sudden planar CTs on Jan 4th, but no propagating ECTs. Two samples of buried surface hoar down 20cm were observed among several places looked - including just a few feet away from each other. 

Pic 2: Jan 4th facets still weak and sugary, but no propagation observed on this layer. CTs took more than the standard 30 loading steps.

Pic 3: New snow falling as graupel, and W wind was blowing it downslope and into depressions/concavities.