Overnight, upper elevation, northeast winds increased, loading slopes in unusual locations. Our manageable avalanche problem today are fresh drifts along the leeward side of mid and upper elevation ridges and around terrain features like chutes and gullies. Todays slabs might be a bit more stubborn than the past few days, but they're manageable because they'll break at or below our skis, board, or sled. However, once triggered any avalanche can grow into a bigger problem if it breaks into weaker snow now buried several feet deep in the snowpack.

Our unmanageable avalanche problem is harder to detect unless we spend a little time and dig into the snow to investigate. What you'll find with minimal effort are weak, sugary, near surface facets and surface hoar. These notoriously tricky and persistent weak layers are now buried a couple feet deep in our snowpack and until recently, have been in their happy place and life is good. However, now that the storm snow is starting to consolidate and settle, these dormant layers are coming back to life. Adding to the complexity is that many slopes avalanched naturally during our recent storm cycle, but there's still plenty more that just need a trigger like us to come along and knock the legs out from underneath them. It's a tricky setup for sure, but it doesn't have to be a roll of the dice and the solution for the next couple of days is easy. Either do a little homework, dig around and identify slopes that have a suspect snowpack or simply avoid being on, under, or connected to steep slopes, especially those facing the north half of the compass and particularly those with an easterly component to their aspect. Remember- any avalanche that breaks into weak layers buried deep in the snowpack will be dangerous.

Above... cracking in front of your skis, board, or sled is a huge clue to unstable snow. JG had a good take on our current state of snowpack affairs. He commented, "The storm slab is becoming more cohesive and we were getting large areas of connected snow to collapse and I can see a potential for avalanches becoming larger due to the increased connectivity of the slab."

With a little homework you can clearly identify the weak snow. In this pit, clean shears reveal a persist buried weak layer.