Whumping and Inconsistent Test Results on Silver Peak

The overnight winter storm was mostly winding down when we arrived at the Pole Creek trailhead this morning with around 4'' of new snow.  Silver Peak has been a spot that we have frequented recently due to the mid elevation location on the Sierra Crest that has showed a more advanced Dec 11 facet layer.  We came back to this location to see if the weak layer became more reactive with the additional storm snow loading.  With the storm underperforming the forecasted amounts overnight, the additional load was not as much as we were expecting.  We did still experience many whumpfs throughout our tour mostly in below treeline terrain.  Snowpack tests were more inconsistent than in past days with some results showing propagation likely and some not.  We ski cut several small test slopes with no results and we did not see any avalanche activity in the area.  The Dec 11 persistent weak layer has up to 1' total of recent storm snow on top now.  The large grain facets are still weak in many areas, but do not seem to have enough of a load to cause an avalanche cycle at this point.