I continued to find buried facets in my travels today. The goal was to dig a bunch of pits to track the distribution of these buried facets before the incoming storm.

Pit #1: Julie's Backside NE 10,960 ft. CT16 SP down 25cm on 0.5mm NSF. Shovel Tilt Tests produced clean, planar shears with Moderate force.

Pit #2 and #3: Between Julie's Backside and Coyote Chute NE 11,110 ft. Dug two pits here a couple hundred feet apart. No facets. This slope had more trees on it and less exposure to the clear sky.

Pit #4: Coyote Chute NE 11,314 ft. CT13 SP down 26cm on .25 - .50mm NSF. These facets are beneath a P+ hard crust. Shovel Tilt Tests produced planar shears with moderate force.

Pit #5: Funnel Trees NW 11,020 ft. This slope had seem some previous wind drifting, and the facets were a bit deeper than other slopes I looked at today. The weak layer seen here is down 60cm below the surface and contains a mix of graupel and small grained (0.5mm) facets. Shovel Tilt Tests produced no results. No results with a compression test (CTN), and no results with an ECT (ECTX).

The bottom line here is that enough facets exist on Northerlies that we need to exercise caution on these slopes when the storm arrives late Tuesday. The forecast is for very strong winds and possibly a foot of snow. This will build fresh wind slabs on top of these weak layers. If the storm shapes up as predicted, I'm going to assume these slopes guilty until proven innocent.