Wind Loading

I thought Mark Staple's avalanche forecast this morning did an excellent job of describing the snow surface conditions as well as the avalanche conditions. Snow was, indeed dense, upside down and a rimed surface in open terrain but it was much better in the trees, where it actually was good, but dense, turning conditions. In wind affected terrain, it was slabby and cracked sometimes but I could never get any of it to go on steep, wind-affected test slopes. With the dense, rimed snow, it gets welded in place fairly quickly. I was in relatively non-wind affected terrain but I bet I could have found some sensitive wind slabs in more exposed terrain. We would occasionally find wind affected terrain even at mid elevations in open areas. Cornices are large. My advice is to avoid recent deposits of wind drifted snow on steeper terrain and stick to the evergreen trees where the surface rime is at a minimum. The deeper snowpack seems solid where I was but I did not dig any snow profiles. Our high point was 10,000' so I'm not sure of the conditions in the high alpine. Avalanche danger was Moderate where we were.