Extensive Percolation of Free Water in SE Shore Snowpit

Dug a pit outside the Heavenly boundary on a WSW aspect, at approximately 8600'. HS was 245 cm, and we dug about 120 cm down. We found that water had percolated through the entire depth of our column, with the majority of layers moist to wet, with most characterized as melt freeze clusters or polycrystals. There was abundant free water in our snowpack, and although we found multiple ice layers and saturated, decomposing crusts, that caused some pooling, none of these were acting as completely impermeable barriers to vertical water movement. We poured some water with coloring (aka Powerade) into the column to assess the water movement (see photo), and as the photo evidences, there was some pooling above several ice layers and crusts, but the water moved freely to the depth of our pit and beyond. We performed a PST on the most concerning layer, which was rounding facets under a saturated crust layer, but there was absolutely no result, as expected.

Of note, we skied the slope shortly after, and despite putting aggressive ski cuts into ~40 degree terrain, we observed almost no loose wet activity. The surface snow readily sluffed downhill, but entrained almost no additional snow, and stopped after short distances. It seemed that the water was percolating so freely through the snowpack that the top layer was behaving more like wet, very granular snow, and not capturing other snow on its way downhill.