When a wolf licks a running rabbit, does it leave bite marks?

Day-off tour in search of soft snow. 

• Skinned a westerly ridge; descended the shaded (northerly) side of a large, westerly avalanche path. 
• Snow below 5000 ft was soft on shaded and low-angle sunny slopes; shallow but supportable on steep, sunny slopes.
• Melt-freeze crust on sunny aspects up to 7400; soft facets on shaded slopes. 
• Wind-polished surface with dunes and drifts above ~7400 ft.
• Soft snow is mostly facets (F+ hard, 2-15 cm thick) sitting above a 1 cm crust that exists up to at least ~7400'. In hand blocks, this sturcture consistently broke in clean, planar shears below the crust. We saw no shooting cracks or other signs of instability.
• Despite the winds and blowing facets > 7400 ft, we found no new drifts or slabs.
• Saw more wolf tracks than surface hoar.
• The faceted surface snow made skinning difficult at times, and we released a few D 0.25 sluffs on steep slopes. 

Shady slopes that harbor soft facets seem like they could support an initial load, but not sustained, incremental loading.