After being down with a vicious head cold over the last few days, I felt good enough to do a gentle traverse from Alta to Brighton today.  I reset my temperatures sensors at different locations and took a good look at the snow from Albion Basin through Catherines and the Dog Lake Chutes.  The new snow had not formed a slab.  The low density stellars were prone to sluffing and would gouge into old facets in places with no old wind slabs.  I did not experience any collapsing today.

It was easy to initiate sluffs on the steeper slopes that would gouge into old facets.  These don't pose much threat the the experienced backcountry traveler.  The debris in this one was about 4 feet deep but very soft.

On a side note, it is very difficult to forecast these small storms that look like they could push our extremely weak snowpack over the edge.  In hindsight it is easy to observe the low density snow which didn't form a slab or add enough weight to overload anything.  However, it's a different story to forecast how things are going to play out at 3 in the morning before getting into the new snow and see how it behaves.  Often these small little storms can create a nice avalanche cycle.  In northwest flow we can also easily pick up more snow then expected which obviously changes the game as well.

While it's hard to call persistent slabs with facets as a weak layer anything less then Considerable, if feels like things are trending toward the Moderate category.