Atomic knee drop

Digging a snow pit at ridgetop one person in our party knelt down and we felt a whumph. This triggered a size 2 avalanche 40m downslope where the slope transitioned to a steeper pitch (30 degrees). It ran on the sugary "facetted" snow over the late november crust. We also saw many other recent avalanches in the area up to size 3 that failed on this same layer or in the recent storm snow. We stayed on very mellow slopes today due to the high avalanche hazard.