Persistent weak layers in the snowpack are generally benign at this time but looking ahead, it's important that we keep the existing poor snowpack structure in mind. Generally speaking, the snowpack near treeline and below is faceted through to the ground at this point. There are areas where the midpack still has some semblance of a denser slab, but with very weak snow above and below, it's turned into an unstable base for future snowloads. Above treeline things are a little more complex. Much of the snow pack is again weak and faceted, but hard wind slabs over riding the weak snow add to the mix. The best case scenario would be for a big dump to cause a widepsread avalanche cycle that would clean everything out. A more likely scenario will be a tenuous, incremental loading on top of the unstable base. The bottome line, is that when we start adding snow, steep, north facing slopes will be a no go.