Meadow underneath Maid of the Mist Basin

Fool-heartedly, I decided to attempt to ski Maid of the Mist today after experiencing false hope about the snow depth from my meander up Flander Basin yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the snowpack was horrible, very variable and faceted, and some of the worst skinning I've done in a long time. However, the snow stability was even worse than the skinning. At approximately 8600", east of Maid of the Mist Creek, I started skinning from the tree edge slightly into the north-east facing meadow. Immediately after leaving tree-line, I heard a large "whump" and noticed a faint crack that shot far into the meadow (I could only see it for 20-30 feet it was so faint, and did not show up in my photo, but it is likely it went farther from how loud the collapse was). We decided to turn around there and carefully re-traced our tracks back into the safety of the dense forest and descend back to our cars that route. As an additional note about the snow, anything solar was unseasonably hot and sticky. It appeared that a notable thermal crust could develop after today's warm temperatures.