Silver Peak Area Testpit

Toured up the ridge system of Silver Peak in the afternoon. South faces were very warm with thick globbing snow and continuously shedding trees. Skied down a north aspect and dug a test pit at 7120' on a 22 degree slope, air temp measured at -4C and snow surface at -9.5C. We observed 140cm of new snow on top of ~4cm of rain crust. Rounding facets were present directly underneath the crust, but no SC or SP fractures were observed during a compression test. We did manage to break the column above the crust on the 26th tap, and also observed CTE2 -10 RP, CTM14 -63 RP, and CTM20 -63 BRK during a single test. The most noticable observation of the day was the 2-3 inch thick breakable crust on the ride down at ~16:30, present on any aspect that received solar rad.