Fish scale ice crystals

Ice crystals, looking like fish scales forming on snow deposits, due to aging under unique weather conditions. The snow is 2-weeks old, in a deep canyon that gets sun only a few hours a day. The temperature is around freezing in mid-afternoon, but well below freezing the rest of the day. The ice crystals probably resulted from a combination of slight melting and sublimation (changing from solid to gas without passing through a liquid phase).

Los Alamos, NM.