The last 24 hours of wind plus snow equals another major loading event, especially at the upper elevations. The snowpack is groaning under 4 - 6” of water, and the stress placed on the buried faceted weak layers is tremendous, and pushing the weak layers over the edge. The few reported large slides breaking into old snow are the canaries in the coal mine. While activity in the backcountry has been hidden by clouds and covered by snow, I expect a few similar large, long running slides breaking into old facets have or could occur in the high alpine of the Cottonwoods and the Provo area mountains. Avoid travel in runout zones beneath steep slopes, large peaks and the bottoms of gullies.

In addition, mid elevation terrain and terrain outside the upper Cottonwoods remains especially suspect, with their own mid pack weakness and basal facets. Shallower snowpack areas are a likely place to trigger slides or a smaller new snow slide or wind drift may “step down”, breaking on one of these deeper weak layers.