Snowpit Rubicon Peak

We toured up Rubicon Peak today to check out the new snow.  We dug a pit around 8000 ft in order to see the rain crust and monitor the December 1st persistent weak layer.  We were able to identify two distinct crusts about 40 cm from the surface of the snow.  There were no signs of faceting near the crusts only melt forms sandwiched in between.  At 43 cm from the bottom of the snow pack we encountered 2mm 4F hard rounding facets under what looked to be a wind buff layer. Below that from 15 cms to the ground we found 2.5mm rounding facets that were 1F hard.  This is only an isolated area and our findings should not be blanketed across the range but in this location the Dec 1st PWL seems to be healing.  We preformed 2 compression tests with no results.  Surface hoar was prevalent on the N aspect and should be monitored as the next storm moves in to the Tahoe Basin.