Interesting test results on Roundtop

We toured the Sisters and Roundtop, observing some sluffs of 10-20cm of new snow on steep north aspects above us on the way in.  West of Winemucca lake we stopped to dig a pit just below a ridge in soft, deep (>270cm) wind fill, similar to what we hoped to ski. We got a CT22 and ECTP23, both failing around 45cm deep. We agreed the failure plane looked like buried surface hoar, not at all what we expected. We were not able to find this layer again with ski cuts and hand pits in other areas.