Buried Surface Hoar Jake's Peak

Went for a tour on Jakes today, after looking at the recent obs from Rubicon peak, we went looking to decrease uncertainty regarding distribution of the buried surface hoar, it's likelyhood to propogate, and understand overall snow depth in the area. Recently developed surface hoar was observed from just past the parking lot all the way to the summit 1-2mm on the surface. We decided to perform simple hand shear tests every 200' from 8000' and above. We found the "thin grey line" of buried surface hoar in the 3 hand pits we dug and also found it in our test pit we dug at 8000'. The Hand shears produced easy q1 fractures on the surface hoar layer buried 40-50cm deep depending on elevation. We toured to the peak and decided to ski back down our skin track based on the high level of uncertainty regarding the distribution and sensitivity of the weak layer. We dug a quick pit at 8000' and performed a CT & ECT trying to gain a bit more info on what was going on. See results and specifics below.

Hs @ 7300' - 50cm

Hs @ 8000' - 111cm

Hs @ 8282' - 118cm

Hand Shear @ 8021' on a North aspect produced Easy Q1 shear down 40cm with the hardness going from 1F to F on the surface. Looking at the snow grains with loupe it was very hard to see any fully developed surface hoar, it looked more like broken feathers surrounded by rounds. However looking at the side of the hand pit you could see the thin grey line about 7cm above K hard rain crust.

Hand Shear @ 8282' on NE aspect produced moderate Q2 shear down 45cm. Same story in this pit, the feathers were hard to ID but broken angular pieces could be seen between rounds.

Hand Shear @ 8700' on ENE aspect produced easy Q1 shear down 45cm. similar to the other 2 pits in terms of grain ID.  

Test Pit @ 8000' NE aspect

CT22 Q2 40cm down on V; Hs:111cm

ECTN22 40cm down on V

Looking at the V in our test pit it appeared that any angular feathers or grains were rounding and moist. 

Based on no whumpfing observed, lack for propagation, and shear quality observed we thought the snowpack appeared to be in a healing trend.