Japan Trees

We toured up Japan Trees and around 2600 ft the rain crust disappeared and gave way to fluffy powder. Besides the glide cracks on adjacent mountains and older roller balls from the warm spell, we observed no other red flags (no cracks or whumphing). However, after digging a pit we observed two significant weak layers. They both appeared to be buried surface hoar. The most recent layer was obvious in the snowpack as a layer of surface hoar at 65 cm. Then a more hidden weak layer that might also be buried hoar at 55cm. During our first pit, the 55cm layer failed and propagated at ECTP26. The obvious 65cm layer failed and propagated at ECTP27. In our second pit, the 65cm layer failed but didn't propagate at ECTN19. The 55cm layer failed at ECTN26, but also didn't propagate. It was interesting to see the difference in propagation between the pits and that without digging the pit, we wouldn't have noticed any signs of instability up high.