Old snow that covered northerly facing slopes through much of November became weak and faceted. This weak snow is not widespread and exists mostly at the highest elevations and now has soft slab of new snow on top of it now. Yesterday's new snow wasn't enough of a load to stress this weak snow and cause avalanches. That should change today as a result of strong south winds transporting snow this morning followed by snowfall today. The combination of this wind-blown snow and snow falling from the sky will stress the weak, faceted snow underneath. This added stress will make human triggered avalanches likely and create dangerous avalanche conditions.

The dilemma is that with such early season conditions, the deepest snow and best coverage is on upper elevation, north-facing slopes. These slopes are the ones that will produce avalanches. The only option is then to find similar slopes that are not steep enough to avalanche (less than 30 degrees in steepness). South-facing slopes simply don't have enough snow to ride today.

Doug Wewer snapped a few great photos of old snow coverage on Ben Lomond Peak like the one below.

Expect both hard and soft slabs of wind drifted snow from this morning's very strong southerly winds.

These fresh slabs will be especially sensitive and break over a wider area on upper elevation, northerly facing slopes where they rest on top of the old, weak, faceted snow. What complicates the situation is that yesterday's strong north winds loaded some south-facing slopes where avalanches remain possible.