Elephant's Hump

Starting the tour around 09:30 skies were clear and temps were still below freezing at this point @ 7800'. Traveling up along NE-N-NW slopes, the snow surface was supportable and firm throughout the way up. We could feel a slight breeze in our face from W-SW in the morning that had tapered off by afternoon. Ambient air temps did climb through the day but only got slightly above freezing, allowing for only isolated areas with direct sunlight to soften up. Within several pit locations, compression tests failed on the Dec. 11th layer and extended column tests propagated on this layer, showing there is still signs of instability. The descent was slow moving and consisted of variable conditions from fully supportable crust to areas of breakable crust and the intermittent softer snow in sunny locations. Slide for life conditions did exist where snow was firm and supportable.