Serac ridge / remote cornice failure triggers deeper weak layer

We were traversing from the south shoulder of Serac ridge to get to the far North end of the ridge (where there were less cornices and an old deep avalanches, which gave us confidence in the snowpack). Upon getting to the ridge, we noticed an enormous crack immediately behind the cornice that heads off to the south; and due to this, we decided to keep as far away from the cornices as we reasonably could while traveling to the north end. There was already a track in from a few days ago; however, due to the cold temperatures (not great for cornices), we decided to give the cornices an even larger berth and chose to travel a few more meters away and right up against the trees on the ridge. Within 20m of starting, and just before I could actually drop further into the forest on the SW side, I had a small settlement. I took one more step before heading into the trees, and I remotely triggered a large part of the cornice 20m away. I have no idea of the actual size of the part of the cornice that fell off, but likely it was roughly a 2.5. These large pieces of cornice traveled down beside where the up-track is (and where all the skier activity has been lately) and then triggered a deep slab on a persistent weak layer (100-150 deep, roughly 80m wide, and ran 600m). Likely this deeper layer was the December 1st crust/facet layer. Needless to say, the cornices are touchy, and deeper layers can still be triggered with these very large loads.