With plenty of fresh snow to work with, a bump in wind speeds also means a bump in fresh wind drifts forming along the leeward side of upper elevation ridges. So... fresh wind drifts are today's most obvious, in your face avalanche problem. Easy to detect by their fat, rounded, and often chalky appearance they're easier to avoid by simply steering clear of any steep, wind drifted, upper elevation slope.

Our recent storm snow gained some strength in the past few days. It's settled and stiffened somewhat and is morphing into a slab. A double edge sword... good news for ease of travel, no so good for avalanche danger because the slab rests on weak October snow or what we call a persistent weak layer. Yesterday Mark and I were in the Wolf Creek zone while Ted was near Bald Mountain, but there's a common theme as we compare notes and observations. We all experienced collapses and whoomphing sounds as we traveled on any terrain that held old October snow. Now here's where it gets tricky... there's a fresh blanket of snow coating our mountains and everything's gonna look white. In fact, it'll be more difficult to determine what slopes held early season snow. But remember... terrain that faces the south half of the compass and lower elevation slopes were bare prior to last weeks big storm. And while there's plenty of gear wrecking rocks and stumps to slam into, there's no old snow and avalanche issues are straight-forward.