Yesterday the winds were blowing 30-40 mph gusting into the 50's on Ogden peak for much of the day. Wind along with 20-24" of new snow has created many drifts of wind blown snow scattered across the terrain. The good news: wind drifts are easy to spot by their rounded appearance and they tend to stabilize quickly and by tomorrow they shouldn't be a problem. The bad news: is that with such strong winds you can expect cross loading at all mid and upper elevations and drifts that have formed in odd places as well, like gullies and mid slope break overs. Avoid being on any steep slopes that's been loaded by the wind.

Most of the Ogden area mountains were snow free before the Thanksgiving storm. This means that many slopes do not have old, faceted snow. However, we have had reports of patchy old snow in the highest northerly facing terrain. I would approach any upper elevation north and northeast facing terrain with caution and for now assume there is old faceted snow that could produce a slab avalanche there. The good news is this is very isolated to steep rocky terrain and there is plenty of other slopes that do not have this problem.