Developing facets on Elephant's Hump

We toured on Elephant's Hump today, looking at the progression of faceting in the shallow snowpack and hunting for buried surface hoar. Some amount of faceting was observed nearly full height through the snowpack, certainly within all of the snow accumulated since Nov 7. We noted areas of surface hoar on the surface up to about 5 to 7 mm, but did not find any buried under the snowfall from Nov 12.

In a few areas we encountered hard wind slab sitting on top of the faceting snowpack, but it presented as unreactive in this area today. Jumping up and down on skis near the edges of the slabs broke the slab underfoot, but did not creating any shooting cracks.

The overall snowpack in this area is shallow at 1.5 to 2 feet, similar to other portions of the forecast area. With care, it is usable for over snow travel.