Travel today was up Willow, Wills Hill, across both Monitor Bowls and exiting out USA Bowl. We were expecting to see natural activity in the Monitors but only saw a few cornice triggered new snow sluffs and we remotely triggered a small pocket in South Monitor. That being said I would not touch either bowl with a ten foot pole, 15 inches of new snow, extremely poor snow pack structure and the wild card, copious amounts wind loading. Both Brett and I agreed that poor snow pack structure paired with new snow and wind loading trumps everything. You can keep telling yourself that there's no slab so it's good to go, but in reality just the settlement of the snow pack creates a slab and its all sitting on extremely weak faceted snow, not to mention the wind. Getting caught in a slide with this much new snow and the weakest snow being at the ground interface would make for a ugly if not fatal ride. Also trail breaking was a bit of a labor today, first you would step through all the new light density snow then when you weighted your ski you would punch though the facets to the ground and end up dam near waist deep on every step, another red flag.

Photos: Cracking on the ridge line, wind blasting on the high ridge line and building cornices, wallering while breaking trail, rime in the trees, photos were a little tough to come by today

FORECASTER NOTE: Well said Mark. All the obvious signs of instability were not "in your face" such as recent avalanches, collapsing and cracking but the writing is on the wall. The weak snow near the ground (poor snowpack structure) will produce avalanches and will most likely catch someone off guard soon. Kobernik

From what I saw today, I would say considerable to high on the wind loaded steep north facing terrain, moderate in most other locations. Since the drop boxes are not location dependent I'll leave it at that, probably go with high in the Monitors.