Observation on Rubicon Peak

We toured up to Rubicon Peak this afternoon. Along the way up we observed 6-12 inches of largely right side up new snow. We dug a quick pit 150 feet below the summit on a fairly wind-exposed test slope. The total new snow depth was 12 inches the bottom 4 inches of new snow were noticeably denser (4Finger) and well bonded to the crusty old snow. The middle 4-5 inches of new snow were very low density (fist -) with a 3-4 inched layer of slightly firmer (fist +) on top. See the first photo. ECTN14 in the middle, most soft snow, but the quality of the shear was very poor. This upside-down new snow layer was only observed in the top ~200 feet of the area around Rubicon peak. We also observed some very limited small cracking, more like crumbling, on this layer in the same area (see the second photo). On the way out snow quality below 7,300 was noticeably heavier/wetter around 3:00pm.