Fresh snow on conservative terrain

10-15 cm of light snow fell over past 24 hours. Windy around 10 pm last night but calm and sunny this morning. We noticed pockets of wind load on N and NE slopes since last night. Temps were -4C at 1950 m @ 9AM, -10C at 850 m @ 1PM We stuck to mellow terrain <30 degrees with trees.

Dug a test pit on a roughly 20-25 degree SW slope in mellow open trees. No result with 10 hand, 10 elbow, 3 shoulder before column lost stability and crumpled, rough failure occurred at 55cm depth. After grabbing the sides of the column and pulling gently the entire upper column slid roughly off a layer around 70 cm deep (45 cm above ground). We didn't have a snow saw so it was a rough cut at the back of the column using a ski pole. Saw some 0.5-1 m high cornices on N side of ridge. No natural avalanches seen this morning 9:00-11:00