By far, the most dangerous situation is in the upper elevation northerly facing terrain where old weak snow is now capped off with 2 to 3 feet of new snow. Human triggered avalanches will be likely through this weekend in the higher terrain. Slopes that avalanched in December are especially suspect as they have a VERY shallow and weak snowpack. This is a dangerous situation because people can travel on a lot of different slopes without triggering anything or seeing any obvious signs of instability. This may give people a false sense of security and then decide to get onto more northerly facing terrain. Make no mistake that this a bad deal. We continued to experience numerous large collapses on Friday which is a tell-tale sign that the underlying weak layer is still active.

Here's a great video which describes how the persistent weak layer of "sugary" faceted snow works:

Persistent Slab Avalanches from Trent Meisenheimer on Vimeo.

Wet avalanche activity is a bit hard to predict just when it will start to happen naturally. Since the new snow has gone through a couple of melt freeze cycles over the last few days during the gradual warm up, this makes me think things won't get out of hand today. However, there is a lot of new snow and if it becomes unstable the wet avalanches could pack a punch. Just be aware that things could heat up enough today to become dangerous. Continue to re-evaluate the snow conditions watching for very wet snow on sunny slopes. Stay out of steep gullies especially those that have big steep slopes above them.