This snowpit was on a north facing slope at 9800' in elevation.

I agree with Evelyn (link to her observation here) that we have a layered snowpack from the past few storms. The gruapel layer does seem like it could be a weak layer. When you rub your hand in the snowpack it falls out of the pit wall with ease. However, ECTX (no propagation) on this layer led me to think differently. I put my shovel behind it and when I pulled on the column it POPPED and had a very clean shear. My guess would be if you found a place at upper elevations with deep wind drifted snow this layer could fail and produce avalanches. It doesn't need to be faceted snow to produce slab avalanches. You only need relatively weaker snow with stronger snow on top. Perhaps we just didn't get the load (slab) to make this layer fail.

We skied a number of steeper slopes facing the north half of the compass without incident. New snow instabilities seemed confined to long running sluffs in the steeper terrain.