Heavy, Wet Snow at Scout Peak

Took a tour from the sno park at Echo up to Scout Peak. From the beginning, snow was already wet and heavy due to overnight cloud cover, and conditions progressively got worse through the tour. At about 8200 ft, I dug a hasty snowpit to get a general idea of what the snowpack was like around here. I didn't perform an ECT, but the persistent weak faceted layer definitely was not as eye-popping as it had been about a week ago. I id'd the weak layer at about 25 cm from the ground and the facets appeared to have become pretty well-rounded. As it can be seen in the picture, the faceted grains were beginning to bind with each other. With that being said, this layer still appeared weaker than the snow lying above it; the faceted layer could still be scooped out separately from the rest of the snowpack. By the time I reached the top of the ridge and was skiing back down, the snow had become quite sloppy with a slight drizzle/mix coming down. Snow coverage in the area was fair enough for a more or less worry-free descent.