With all the snow falling lately, we've developed some other layers of interest towards the upper part of our snow pack. We have a layer of buried near surface facets beneath the snow that fell on Sunday 2/3. Last week there was some discussion about whether or not this might be some buried surface hoar. Today I was able to positively ID this layer as buried facets. I'll post some photos below of it's location in the snow pack. I found this layer at 127cm. The new snow pulled off as a block on this interface with moderate shovel shears. This layer also failed a compression test CT12 Q2 RP. This layer did not react to the ECT (ECTX). This is not a huge concern to me right now, but if we add a bigger slab on top of this weak layer, we could potentially see some failures here. The next couple days should give this layer a good thumping and we'll see how it reacts.
One other thing I'd like to mention about today's pit. After both the compression test and ECT, I was able to pull out the entire column as one cohesive unit all the way to the ground.
In the first photo, the crystal card is sticking into the layer of buried near surface facets. You can see the interface across the pit wall as a thin dark line. The second photo shows where the block pulled off with a shovel shear on top of the buried NSF. Third photo is the entire column of snow as a cohesive unit.
Video
A very scoured looking SW face above treeline and a short video clip of the winds on Pre Laurel Ridge.
Look for rising avalanche danger over the next few days with more snow and wind in the forecast.
