Today's snow was a heavy powder and cutting the skin track was the most energy consuming one of the season for me. My skis penetrated through the new snow and would occasionally catch a tip, causing my ski to dive deep under the dense snow. When stepping out of my skis my leg would penetrate the snow up to my hip. I did not experience any of the recently reported collapsing, but did come across a hillside that looked like some hikers/sledders walked up and caused a pretty significant collapse sometime recently (picture included).
I dug a pit and reported my findings. I did get some collapsing around the base of the new snow layer CT11, RP @60cm. The new snow is sitting on about 20cm of buried facets that were easy to scoop out and was the classic sugary consistency. Once I dug out enough of the weak layer and the new snow layer was unsupported it would collapse as a cohesive slab. Below was a 5ish cm crust, followed by the early season snow that seems to be firming up. I think that with more snow and loading an avalanche is likely.
I had an enjoyable day lapping some low angle terrain where my main concern was the low coverage and did have one unfortunate run in with some deadfall that was well hidden under the new snow.
