Storm Slabs at Deep Creek

Day off ski tour in Deep Creek Canyon today. Deep trailbreaking and deep storm snow. Light snowfall occasionally increasing to moderate with rimed needle particles piling up particularly when up at the ridgetop. Calm to light winds with obscured sky from consistent cloudcover. 

At the ridgetop at 7700' N aspect some kicks at the wind pillows yielded shooting cracks and some 1 foot deep slabs failing and sliding a short ways downslope (photos 1 and 2). Peeking over the edge I could see filled in crowns on the steep rollovers- looked to be about 1 foot deep but hard to tell without getting into way steeper terrain than we planned for the day. 

In many locations on our descent I saw small crowns in below treeline terrain that had filled in with more recent snowfall. I would guess avalanching naturally yesterday afternoon. We came to a small convex rollover (not very steep- 35 degree max) and found the storm slab avalanche shown in photos 3 and 4. 12-18" crown filled in with more recent snowfall, didn't run far downslope as we were in overall low angle terrain. Note the cracks at rollover. 

The snowfall intensity and temperatures hovering around freezing seemed to lead to the storm snow rapidly settling into a slab. Surface snow was feeling heavier than the deeper snow- F+ over F within the 18-24" of recent storm snow. As we descended the effect was greater- still skied well but was getting funky as time progressed.