Observations from Deer Park area

I toured into the Deer Park area today with a couple of guests and was keen to check out any storm slab instabilities that might be present. While skinning up the Deer Park ridgeline, I felt a few inches of light and soft surface snow with slightly firmer snow beneath that. Using my pole, I could feel a density change beneath that to softer snow again, roughly a foot below the surface. Many different hard steps above a well-compressed skin track showed the snow breaking out in cohesive blocks but with no real significant cracking away from my skis; some steps above the skin track did, however, produce some more significant cracking in the upper foot or so of the snowpack (photo 1).

In the middle of the day, just above 7600' on a NE aspect (pin drop location), I saw two similar crowns from recent D1 avalanches, very close to one another on the same slope, with shallow (~4") but very well defined crowns. (photos 2 and 3) The position here, adjacent to the ridgeline, made me wonder if wind effect had any role, but I saw very little blowing snow or wind-affected surface texture in the area and it is a broad, well-treed ridgeline. 

A bit later in the afternoon, while skiing through a small NW-facing test slope around 6800', I triggered a deeper (~1') D1 slab. (photo 4)