Today, you'll find shallow soft and hard slabs of wind driven snow, particularly on west to north to easterly facing aspects. These will be primarily in the upper elevation bands, but pockets of soft slab may be found to the lee of mid-elevation ridgelines. Drifts will be smooth and sculpted and may crack out upon approach. Shooting cracks may or may not be present.

The mid week storm produced many large hard slab natural avalanches failing on our persistent weak layer of facets (PWL) from mid-November. Many of these avalanches were 4-6' deep....and upwards of 10' deep in heavily wind loaded terrain. The PWL is so deeply buried that it would require a significant trigger (large cornice, multiple people on a slope, powerful storm) to avalanche. For skiers and riders, it may require finding a thinner snowpack area (4' deep or less) to trigger one of these avalanches. The trend is toward stabilization and I suspect we will remove this as an avalanche problem soon.