Facets in Shirley Canyon

Touring in the Tram Ridge/ Shirley Canyon area today, we found the buried near-surface facets aprox 60cm down in a 120cm snowpack (N aspect, 7,800'). In this location, this layer did not show signs of propigation in several ECTs (ECTN18, 20), and we did not see any other signs of slab instabilities. This thick facet layer (4-6cm in this location) is obvious and easy to observe after digging, and is clearly a weaker layer than the overriding slab above, even though it did not show a willingness to propigate today. 

At this point in the recent deep slab cycle, we are seeing the majority of instabilities (whumphing, shooting cracks) above ~8k'. We have seen evidence of the mid-storm natural deep slabs as low as 7,200', but the sensitivity in the lower elevations apears to be stabilizing.