Another night with a marginal refreeze followed by a day of warm temperatures and intense sunshine, you can bet that we will see wet avalanche activity in almost all aspects except where the snow is cold and dry. As the sun warms the sunny slopes, the snow will slowly lose its bonds becoming unstable. Once warmed enough, we will start to see roller balls followed by wet-loose avalanches and the possibility of wet slab avalanches that fail on faceted snow grains (see persistent weak layer discussion).

Do not overstay your welcome in steep sunlit terrain. If you are seeing roller balls or sinking into the snowpack it's time to get out of there. Make sure to give yourself plenty of time to exit from under the terrain being heated from above. These same avalanches will happen once again today.

So what's changed? Well, "The Likelihood" meaning the possibility of triggering an avalanche, has gone down. BUT, the consequence of the avalanche has remained the same.

I get it; there are tracks everywhere. It's easy to get lured into the terrain. But remember, faceted snow with a strong slab is no joke, and in my opinion, it's not worth messing with. These are bone-crushing avalanches that will break all around you with no escape. Hey, I want to ride big terrain as well. But a mentor once told me never to "mess with facets" and that's been my motto ever since. Think of it this way:

On average, a human makes 35,000 choices every day. If we are in the backcountry, we are making these choices, and the bet would be our life (we only get one of those). If you ride 50 days a winter, you will make 1,750,000 decisions. If you stretch that over a 30-year career in the backcountry, you must be right 52,500,000 times. You only get one chance to mess it up. This is why I make very conservative choices when dealing with faceted snow.