A bump in winds overnight created a fresh round of drifts that'll react to our additional weight. Found mostly on the leeward side of upper elevation ridges, you'll also want to be on the lookout for cross-loaded terrain like chutes and gullies. In either case, it's an easy and mostly manageable avalanche problem to avoid by simply steering clear of any fat, rounded piece of snow, particularly if it sounds hollow like a drum. And remember... our snowpack is super shallow and triggering even a small slide can take you for a body-bruising ride through rocks and stumps barely hidden under the thin snowpack.

Last weeks high and dry weather created a layer of weak surface snow or what we call near surface facets. In the short term it's loud, recrystallized powder and good riding. In the long term it turns into a headache, especially once its buried, because it becomes the next problem child in the snowpack. And that's exactly our setup right now as last weekend's storm snow buried and preserved this weakness. This becomes a potentially problematic scenario, especially as we add additional weight to our developing snowpack. Think about an upside-down cake... or stronger snow on weaker snow. This type of layering leads to tricky avalanche conditions, where we can trigger slides from a distance or from adjacent slopes. And once triggered, today's avalanches may break wider and deeper than you might expect.

But you don't have to ride blind... so, look for signs of unstable snow like loud whoomping sounds and sudden collapses of the snowpack or shooting cracks in front of your skis, board, or sled.