This has been the weather for a few days this week, with strong gusty winds, higher density snow and on and off snow fall, all adding up to a high avalanche danger.

The snow conditions currently are somewhat inverted with the first wave of snow this week coming in very cold and low density and now this current higher density snow on top making for dense and slabby snow. In very protected places out of the wind the snow is a little better.

Even though I did not get any good test results in this snow pit, it was easy to identify the different layers and densities from the stormy weather this week. There is not much of a slab in this location, but in the higher terrain where more snow and very strong winds have put a dense heavy slab on these layers. The old snow surface about a foot down which is the cold low density snow from early in the week could likely fail with all the snow and water weight.