A 24 hour data dump from Windy Peak (10,662') illustrates recent trends for wind and crashing temperatures.

Today's fresh drifts are easy to detect by their fat, rounded appearance and easy to avoid, by losing some elevation and steering towards wind sheltered terrain. The wild card is... recent drifts rest on a slick Christmas Eve rain crust that provides a resistance free surface for avalanches to run on, and that all means todays avalanches might pack a little more punch than you'd expect.

Trevor and Noahs pit profile in Mill Hollow reveals a reactive layer (ECTP19) failing on early December snow.

From record warm temperatures to a good shot of rain followed by rapid cooling, our snowpack has been yanked all over the map in just 48 hours. Sure, weird weather makes for weird snowpacks, but I'm taking the glass half full route and thinking... short-term pain, long term gain. Yeah, Christmas Eve was a mess, but my hunch is that the moist snow in our midpack and near the ground is going to welcome the colder temperatures, lock up, and become comfortable in its own skin. However, this is an unusual setup for us and I'm gonna proceed with, it's a guilty snowpack until proven otherwise approach and continue gathering more information before submitting a verdict.

For now, I suspect you could still trigger a slide that breaks deeper and wider than you might expect, especially on steep, rocky slope , facing the north half of the compass.

Looking into the future... raincrusts in the snowpack are a bad deal and I'm not psyched with this setup. In fact, some of the bigger train-wrecks we've had in the western Uinta's involve a raincrust/faceted snow/slab trifecta. Let's not take our eyes of this one.