Mountain Addicts AST 1

We saw quite a few size 1-1.5 natural storm slabs from today/overnight/yesterday. Another group said that they saw a natural storm slab release today. During the day we also observed some shooting cracks. We tested a small slope and initiated a very small avalanche that failed down 35cm (picture). In our snow-pit at 1800m, east aspect, 2 meter deep snowpack, we could easily identify a surface hoar layer down 35cm. We got consistent sudden planar results (pop) in the very easy to moderate range on this layer. An extended column test failed on this layer as well, propagating across the column in one loading step (moderate range). The surface hoar was very obvious to the naked eye and quite large, 10mm. The December crust layer was prominent at this location, however not reactive in our tests. Good, silky skiing in simple terrain today!