North facing trees

We skied steep north facing trees on Friday. This was our first day skiing this area since the high danger rating and chose to ski conservatively. We dug a pit at 1610 m elevation. Recent storm snow (~20cm) was triggered easily but did not pose much of a threat in the trees. A wind slab layer at ~40 cm from the surface was triggered with 3 hits from the elbow, and we were able to make the entire 145 cm column go with 3 hits from the shoulder. The contact with the ground was quite facetted with large crystals. The ski quality was very high and we gained confidence with every run in the trees. We did not observe any whomphing or cracking and the storm at the surface was not sluffing as much as we expected. Great first day!