As last week's storm snow settles, it's becoming more cohesive and beginning to bring the weak, sugary, near surface facets (NSF) formed during the January dryspell out of its dormancy. I spent the past couple days stomping around Upper Weber/Chalk Creek in an attempt to get a 30,000' view of weak layer distribution. Even though old snow surfaces vary greatly it's really the same story snowpack-wise. The weakest snow I've found is on east, north, and northeast aspects, especially on mid and upper elevation wind sheltered slopes. Here's where it gets tricky... large swaths of upper elevation terrain facing the north half of the compass were blasted by the winds prior to our recent storms and weak snow distribution is spotty at best. That means you'll need to evaluate each slope on an individual basis.

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This weeks uber-fluff storm snow contains very little water, it's super low density, and that means it's easily drifted by winds. And while recent winds have blown from nearly every quadrant of the compass, consistent westerly winds the past 48 hours have added just enough body and cohesion to the light fluffy snow, transforming it into a stiffer wind drift with slab-like characteristics.

Found mostly in upper elevation, leeward terrain, today's fresh wind drifts are gonna continue to be touchy, breaking 2' deep and may start to expand their boundaries and break wider than you might expect. In any case, avoiding avalanches today means just searching for soft snow untouched by the wind. Areas with wind drifted snow will look rounded, pillowy, and smooth and may sound hollow like a drum.