Shirley Canyon slide in the Silverado area

We started up Shirley canyon at 10am with the aim of reaching the top of Silverado by noon under overcast skies. It had snowed 6"-9" the previous night and the storm was just clearing. Numerous point releases all over squaw valley and the tram face were already present. The weather was overcast with intermittent snow but temps were sub 40 deg F when we headed out. Desite the number of point releases, we did not see any slab evidence and so we decided to head up Shirley canyon to ski silverado. It took us approximately 2.5 hours to the top. We skied 2 runs down with no instabilitily on the north facing slope we skied. At about noon, the sun broke through and it became quite hot, and snow quality deterioration was clear. We heard several small ice/snow releases through china wall on Silverado. The snow deterioration convinced us to head down. We headed down along the out of bounds line along skier's right of silverado. As we approached the steep portion of the lower bowl, we both commented that given the solar heating, slide possibility was high. We made our way down the run while I made cuts on my snowboard, releasing slabs with approximately 6" crests. We skied down through the pre-released area. We decided to cut right over an approximately 15 foot cliff-band, setting off wet-slabs as we went. My friend got a bit hot on the traverse and set of a 6" crown that was approx 10 feet wide and 6 feet down the hill. Despite the small crown, the heavy snow was enough to carry him over the 15 foot cliff and it carried him another 50+ yards beyond. He lost both skies, goggles, etc but was somehow unharmed. He was not burried, or hurt, and lucky to be just past the group of trees present, falling off the cleanest portion of the cliffband. On the skin out, dozens of new wet-slides were visible and the snow had changed from powder to sun-beat spring slush on all faces below 7000 feet.