Small Skier triggered slabs in Central WF

Today’s objectives were to assess the distribution and sensitivity of slabs on the 12/31 interface in the Central Whitefish Range, accessed from Stryker 

• At upper elevations, we skier triggered a couple of soft slabs, 1 foot thick, that broke on the 12/31 interface. These were small in size and didn’t propagate more than 15 or 20 feet wide.
• The 12/31 interface here is a very soft, almost impossible to feel freezing rain crust over soft, faceted snow. We could see some broken surface hoar grains as well. The structure wasn’t very alarming; there is no distinct hardness change anywhere at this boundary; all fist hard snow. Column tests did not propagate either.
• Given the shallow soft slabs on an interface that didn’t seem capable of surprising behavior, we felt comfortable skiing steep but manageable pitches. We avoided high consequence terrain.