Avalanche: Sunset Peak

On our second lap on the north face of Sunset Peak I started down about 200 ft below the summit, after a few turns I looked back and saw only minor sluffing following me, skied lookers left of the center of the concave run cutting into center near bottom and ran out the run to Lake Catherine. When I looked back up at my run I saw I had pulled out a pocket that had run over half of my tracks and left a debris pile about 2.5 feet deep stopping on the 20 degree apron, it was shallow enough my tracks that cut deeper could still be seen in the slide path. My partners skied down the more protected tree line and informed me it had broke about three seconds after I passed the fracture line and moved rather slowly never threatening to over run me. From observing smaller sluffs it seemed a light crust had formed yesterday afternoon and the new snow about 4" deep came down on top of it over night forming a very soft slab that was running on that surface. Just before starting the run the sun came out for a very short time and a lot of point release sluffs occurred. we climbed our uptrack one more time and skied some lower angle near by, one of my partners set off another small sluff that was not observed until we were back at the lake. Deciding we were pushing our luck we called it a day.