Yesterday's strong southerly winds have created wind slabs on the lee sides of ridges and terrain features. Now the hard part, they will be covered by the new 3-12" inches of snow today, making them harder to spot. The story remains the same, be on the lookout for smooth, rounded, dense and cracky snow – they will be found along ridgelines and also well off the ridge lines, with drifts down in open bowls, along gully walls, and on mid slope break overs. Avoid wind drifts on steep slopes, which will be most widespread on the northerly through easterly facing slopes.

* Heads up - the National Weather Service is thinking the northerly winds could pick up later today. With 3-12" of fluff, it will have plenty of snow available to transport and create new drifts of wind blown snow.

How much new snow and wind will it take to re-activate these dormant weak layers of faceted snow buried in our snowpack? good question... I don't think anyone has the answer. Here's what I know - anytime you load or stress the snowpack with wind or new snow the chance of triggering a persistent slab avalanche increases. Your best and only strategy for this type of avalanche is avoidance. Simply, avoid steep, shallow, wind drifted terrain that faces the north half of the compass. As they become more sensitive, they can be triggered from a distance, from below or by releasing a wind slab that then steps down.

Our snowpack depths are unusually variable, and the snowpack is especially weak where it is shallow, including slopes that have slid one or more times this year. Cracking and collapsing are bulls-eye clues to instability.