Extended Column Test in Johnson Canyon

Our groups objective was to find the Jan 4 rain layer and see how the new storm snow was reacting to it. The layer was wide spread and easily identified in the area we were working. This layer felt very unsupportabe under foot, with an average ski pen of 35cm and boot pen of close to 60cm. As we exposed the snow profile, we found 55cm of new snow and the sugary faceted grains deeper down fell away and were very easily spotted with the naked eye. A quick compression test revealed easy results on the facet layer so we decided to do an extended column test. This ECT failed on the second round of taps and propagated across the entire column.