Observation on Picnic Rock

Toured up to picnic rock on Brockway this morning. We chose this location because it is low angle and being south facing buried surface hoar is less likely.  We dug a pit on the way up on a south aspect and saw no signs of instability. An extended Column test broke but did not propagate 7cm down in the new snow. ECTN4. A Compression Test failed cleanly at the same layer CT3 Q2.  We also did 2 shovel tap tests targeting the new old snow interface to see if we could find the buried surface hoar layer. One broke cleanly on, while the second did not, on the new old snow interface. On closer inspection of the plane of failure we could not find the buried surface hoar. We did not observe any collapsing or whumpfing during the tour except for right along the summit ridgeline. 

We continued up to picnic rocks proper where we could kick at the steeper N facing, and slightly wind affected slopes, from the safety of the ridge. After 5 kicks, with some cracking, we initiated a slide/collapse about 30x30 feet wide and 5-6 inches deep on a 45+ degree slope. This failure happened within the new snow layer.  We did another quick shovel tap test on the new old snow interface at the top of the crown, but did not see any failure at the new old interface.

Photo 1. Our snow pit, ECTN4 7cm down and then no other failures on the right and starting to isolate the Compression test on the left CT3 at the same 7cm down layer. 

Photo 2. Right side of slide/collapse trigger by kicking at the ridgeline. 

Photo 3 Left side of the same slide