Elephant's Hump Observation

Decided to dig a really deep hole and look at the snow at the base of our snowpack. My snowpit ended up being deeper than I am tall and climbing out of it was a bit tricky. Beautiful large surface hoar covered the snow surface from the parking area to my pit location. I stayed on mellow terrain and didn't see any evidence of previous avalanche activity. Other than a thin band of easily recognizable buried surface hoar, my pit was fairly predictable with lots of strong snow on top of still weak facets. I was surprised that I didn't get results on the buried surface hoar. The buried surface hoar was mostly intact and easy to see on a crystal card but appeared to be intermixed with decomposing fragments of new snow and perhaps not a fully consistent layer. It took a lot of digging but the facets way at the base of the snowpack are still weak and that's what the Deep Tap test showed. 

Photo 1: Impressive large surface hoard widespread above Red Lake.

Photo 2: Close up of surface hoar

Photo 3: Even more surface hoar

Photo 4: Deep snowpack and more surface hoar

Photo 5: Deep snowpit and Deep Tap test before

Photo 6: Deep Tap test after DT 21

Photo 7: Looking across Red Lake at the SE slopes of Red Lake Peak