Observation: Turnagain

We planned to stick to conservative terrain today, and as we left the alder-line below the meadows we had a couple of small collapses of the crust underneath the new snow. It felt like breakable crust with about 6in of light fluffy snow on top. When the crust collapsed through we did get some small shooting crack in places where the snow was more wind affected (nothing further than 3' down low). Higher up on the ridge we did find some pockets of wind affected snow that was starting to turn into small wind slabs. I stomped a couple of these and got shooting cracks up to about 15' in front of my ski. Some of these pockets also moved a little for me but we were in low angle terrain so they could not go far. It seemed that the reactive layer was just the new snow where it was wind affected, and it was failing at the bottom of the new snow or the old/new snow interface, so only 6"-8" deep.