Observation: Silver Fork

In a nutshell, the basal facets have gained strength and don't seem to be much of a concern in the deeper snowpack areas. Shallow areas (<12") are taking a beating with the high pressure. The pack is becoming completely faceted in these locations. A shallow depth snowpack does not need a very steep temperature gradient to facet rapidly. The surface above around 9000 is starting to show the effects of near surface faceting with small grained facets present on the northwest through northeast aspects that we visited today.