At around1:30 a partner and I went out the gate at the top of Chair 8 and traversed left above where other tracks had gone down toward the top of Chair 5. We got too far left and just far enough below the ridge that we were too low to get back around to where the other tracks went out. We were standing above a steep, but short convex roll into a small terrain trap. I've skied this area before and knew it was prone to slide. I discussed the situation with my partner, telling him it would likely go, so he waited in a safe zone above watching as I went in. I made a right turn and the convex feature broke just as predicted. The snow was heavy and the runout short so it wasn't moving too fast. I thought I could get out on the opposite side of the trap, but my tips torpedoed in and I fell. The sliding snow quickly buried me. My head was only 6" under the surface and I was able to get my hand/arm out of the snow waiving to my partner and getting an airway into my face. Turns out, he didn't need my hand - he saw precisely where I was (only 40ft away or so) and was there within seconds. He didn't have to use his transceiver. I was lucky to have fallen the way I did, with my head higher on the opposite side of the trap than my body/legs. My skis were down a good 2 meters.
After we got out and skied down to a safe spot, we chatted with a couple of patrollers who were standing above the crown for most of the extraction. They mentioned a lighter layer that is buried by more recent denser snow. It had warmed during the day, raining at the base area, so the density likely increased throughout the day. The light layer had not bonded well to the rain crust below.
Be careful out there, and make better choices than we did!