Observation: Turnagain

Few clouds at 10am building to overcast by 1:30 pm.
The more elevation we gained, the warmer it got.

Below 700': Dry but compact settled powder with 3-5mm needle-like surface hoar.
Near 700' we noticed the snow hanging on the trees became wet + drippy, developing a crust underneath the trees. Open areas still had dry snow and surface hoar. We witnessed multiple snow bombs falling off trees and one of us got hit by a small one.
~1000'-1200': Thin MF crust capping dry snow beneath.
1200' to 1500': a thin layer of wet snow sat on the surface. It looked like surface hoar had formed overnight but was melting. The snow surface was variable due to prior wind effect. Sometimes you were right on the surface whereas a few feet away your ski could sink in a few inches.
We turned around here due to concerns of poor ski quality and risk of injury if we continued higher.

We dug a snow pit at 1500' in a narrow corridor that likely had little skier traffic. Unfortunately, we dug into a tree well that spanned the majority of the pit, leaving only a narrow strip where we could locate the facets and crusts. Therefore, we performed no instability tests, but we were able to check out the structure.
HS 195 cm
Thin layer of wet grains sat on the surface. A dense hard slab continued down for a just over a meter.
110cm below the surface was moist rounding facets, 1f- in hardness. This layer was ~3cm thick. A ~5cm weak crust (1f) sat below this before more moist and rounding facets sat on top of a thick and stout crust (120cm below the surface).