Snow pit on Brockway Summit

Skied near Brockway summit this afternoon. Nearly all aspects skied (west, NW and south) were becoming gloppy in the sun, except for sheltered N facing slopes. I dug a pit on such a sheltered N facing slope, where unconsolidated snow still existed, at 7550 feet. The result of an extended column test was an ECTN8 at 4cm down on the most recent new old snow interface. I also conducted an artificially loaded propagation saw test to see how this slope might react to new snow loading. I sprinkled 10cm of snow onto of a 26-degree pitch and conducted 2 PST's on the same column. I let the snow sprinkled on this column settle for 10 minutes before testing it. The first PST targeted the layer that broke in my ECT. This failed at 28 out of 100cm. In the same column I also cut along the current surface snow interface which failed at 25 out of 100cm. Boot penetration in this area was only ~ 9 inches. I looked for signs of near surface facets and surface hoar at both of the PST layers that failed, but could not see any 90-degree edges with the naked eye. I did observe lots of intact stellars on the surface snow.