Snow pit on Incline Lake Peak

Toured Incline Lake Peak this afternoon. A hand pit at 8,400 on an eastern aspect broke easily on the storm slab. Kicking above the skin track yielded some small cracking on this layer in the same location.  We dug a pit on a north aspect at 9,100 ft. Total snow depth was 180cm with a bit under one meter of new snow. We did an extended column test which failed at 12 taps, but did not propagate across the column. This failure was at the bottom of the dense storm slab ~20cm down. We also did a compression test which failed on the same layer at 8 taps and broke quite cleanly. This test also failed at 24 taps on top of an old rain crust in the old snow.  The dense storm slab was skier supportable in many locations during the ascent.