For the past 48 hours, northeast winds have been blowing along the high ridges, finding enough loose snow to blow around and forming dense drifts in unusual locations. Found along the leeward side of mid and upper elevation ridges and around terrain features like chutes and gullies, todays slabs are gonna be a bit more stubborn than the past few days. In fact, in many locations they'll feel welded in place. However, once triggered any avalanche can grow into a bigger problem if it breaks into weaker snow now buried several feet deep in the snowpack. Your best strategy is to simply avoid fat looking, rounded pillows of snow, especially if they feel or sound hollow like a drum.

Cross-loaded, upper elevation chutes and gullies like the terrain pictured above, are the kind of places you could trigger a fresh wind drift today. (Boyer photo)

This is where it gets tricky. Our unmanageable avalanche problem is harder to detect unless we spend a little time and dig into the snow to investigate. What you'll find with minimal effort are weak, sugary, near surface facets and surface hoar. These notoriously tricky and persistent weak layers are now buried a couple feet deep in our snowpack and until recently, have been pretty well-behaved. However, now that the storm snow is starting to consolidate and settle, these dormant layers are coming back to life. Adding to the complexity is that this layering isn't widespread and found mostly in terrain where these fragile crystals didn't get destroyed by the wind prior to last weeks big storm. Suspect terrain includes mid and low elevation creek bottoms and terrain features where cold air pools. It's a deceptive setup for sure, but it doesn't have to be a roll of the dice and the solution for the next couple of days is easy. Either do a little homework, dig around and identify slopes that have a suspect snowpack or simply avoid being on, under, or connected to steep slopes, especially those facing the north half of the compass. Remember- any avalanche that breaks into weak layers buried deep in the snowpack will be dangerous.

I rolled up to this freshly triggered slide Thursday near Wolf Creek Pass just as the dust was settling. It was a nice sized pocket measuring 2 feet deep and 150 feet wide, only running 100 feet vertically due to terrain features. This slide occurred on a wind sheltered North aspect at 9,500 feet and failed on well preserved Surface Hoar. This is the kind of avalanche issue we're dealing with the next couple days. (Gordon photo)

With a little homework you can clearly identify the weak snow. In this pit, clean shears reveal a persistent buried weak layer.