Here's what our weak snow near the ground looks like and Cody's take... "4-6 mm Depth Hoar crystals found in our snowpit in the Humpy Creek drainage. Hard to trust a depth hoar snowpack even when buried this deep..."

Winds are cranking along the ridges and now they have a little fresh snow to work with. For today, I bet you'll encounter shallow, sensitive drifts like the one in the image above. Even with just a few inches to blow around, it never ceases to amaze me how the Uinta range can find snow, channel it through terrain features, and whip up a fresh batch of drifts sensitive to our additional weight. While today's wind drifts are found mostly along the leeward side of mid and upper elevation ridges, drifts also formed around terrain features like chutes or gullies. In any case, today you'll want to look for and avoid any fat, rounded piece of snow, especially if it sounds hollow like a drum. (Scroggin image)

After a brief sabbatical, winds are back at work, busily creating additional layers of cornice that may break back further than you might expect. And remember- several large, recent avalanches have been triggered with cornice fall. You definitely wanna give these large, unpredictable pieces of snow a wide berth and not ruin someones day below by inadvertently knocking a boxcar size piece of snow down on them.

A piece of cornice releasing naturally, rolled down onto the slope below sometime early Sunday morning, triggering this large slide that broke to weak snow near the ground. Approx 8' deep, 200' wide, and running 800' vertically, this avalanche occurred on a NE aspect at 10,300' at the upper reaches of Mill Fork of Chalk Creek. (Nalli images)