Bacon Rind, Skillet

We toured up to the Skillet today. We dug 7 pits on our way up. We found surface hoar buried 6-10” below the surface in all of our pits. This layer failed (ECTN 11 and 12s), but it did not propagate. At this point we were thinking about skiing the Skillet. We dug a pit at the top of the chute at 8,900’. The buried surface hoar was present in this pit, but it did not fail in the ECT. We had an ECTP 22 in facets 2.5’ below the surface of the snow. Because of this result and the terrain traps in the Skillet, we changed our plan and took a more conservative route down. Looking ahead, the buried surface hoar is the primary concern in this area. When we get more snow on top of this layer, instability will increase.