Snowpit from Tahoe Mountain, South Lake Tahoe

Hiked up a lower elevation, northeast facing hill in town to assess new snowfall and its bonding potential to the old snow surface. On the short hike up, I noticed localized collapsing and cracking in the skin track. Small test slopes near treewells were easy to kick off new snow from the previous icy surface (see photo) but did not propogate. The snow was very wet, almost melting upon impact with my jacket, high density, and 15 cm of new snow had accumulated at 7000' between 11am and 4pm. It was snowing heavily throughout the afternoon and winds blew strong over the ridge top. There were isolated cornices along the crest of Tahoe Mountain facing N and NE. Our compression test showed results quickly at 1 and 13 taps in the upper layers of the new and old snow interface. I noticed much less new snow in treed areas at the bottom of our tour (around 6300') of about 6cm by 4 pm.