Buried near surface facets from prior to the last storm sit on top of a rain crust below 9500'. The facets seem most pronounced where melt layer recrystalization process was most pronounced at mid elevations where rain put in lots of heat in the snowpack. It will be interesting to see whether this layer becomes a player as large loads are added to the snowpack in coming days. The upper limit of this layer acted as a resistant shear plane as well as the lower limit of it against the rain crust which appeared to have slightly larger faceted grains (also resistant planar in shear).
Our buried surface hoar layer from a few weeks back was also still intact in our protected pit location at mid elevation though it was not reactive to stability tests. This layers seems fairly well bridged out by overlaying rain crusts.. for now.
