The mountain snowpack harbors more than a few structural irregularities and interfaces that involve pockety old faceted October snow in the basement as well as pre-Christmas and post-New Year's buried weak layers. These seem to be weakest at the low and mid-elevations and this seems to fall in line with the natural avalanche activity noted by Kory, Bill, Doug and others from earlier in the week. Still, time, warm temps, and settlement has helped the snowpack to adjust and slowly stabilize over the past few days, but I still need some more data points from some of the outlier portions of the range to feel completely confident. I would still advise approaching steep wind drifted areas - particularly thinner snowpack areas - with caution.
Greg Gagne, Doug Wewer and I toured up in the Cutler area yesterday...and Bill Brandt was nearby and to the south. We all found mostly stable conditions with pockety, if unreactive, areas of the New Year's weak layers. Kory Davis and team found similar conditions further to the south below the Ben Lomond massif; yet there is still some wariness from all the activity earlier in the week. You can find our observations in the menu above.