For the moment, our problem children, several persistent weak layers of snow, now buried a couple feet from the snow surface, feel like they're becoming more comfortable in their own skin. In fact, we haven't seen or heard of any avalanches breaking to old snow in about a week... and that's good news. Sure, the pack feels bomber under our skis, board, or sled, however we gotta think not only about the snow we're riding in, but also the snow we're riding on. And while we might forget about weak layers, the snowpack has an amazing memory. Fact is... older, weak snow is hard to detect unless we dig down and investigate the layering. However, if you do a little homework and trench down a bit, you'll still find weak, sugary facets, now buried between 1' to 3’ deep beneath the snow surface and that's the devious culprit behind recent persistent slab avalanches.

The snowpack is becoming less cranky, though it's still quite complex, so let's keep it tight and avoid terrain where we could trigger a slide that breaks deeper and wider that what we might've bargained for. Think... steep, rocky, shallow... like slopes that have avalanched several times already this winter.