Terminator back country

Did a quick lap out of bounds off the hill today. Overall things felt pretty stable given how deep the snow is. There was a bit of wind effect near ridge crest, but we didn’t observe any cracking or signs of instability while dropping in. Of note, once we got below approx 1850m we started getting cracking and whumpfing in every little opening in the Christmas trees. Investigation showed this to be a surface hoar layer, up to 30mm in size (with no open creeks nearby), that is well preserved down about 40cms. Thankfully the thin snow coverage below this elevation makes it hard to find many open slopes, but I figured it was worth a heads up anyway.