Wind Loading

OK, I know this is a mostly worthless observation because there's no avalanche hazard where I was, which is the reason I was there. We skied both east and west facing slopes above Little Dell Reservoir from about 6,000 to 7,000 feet. Many of the slopes had just the foot or a foot-and-a-half of new snow on top of the bare ground, but some slopes had new snow on top of the pre-existing snow. I could not find any buried faceted snow layers anywhere. I know they were there a month ago, but it all got warm enough to melt them or settle them into insignificance, at least everywhere I looked. But as you can imagine, it was pretty scratchy skiing, which required rock skis. But hey, at least we got to do a lot of thrashing through the scrub oak and sagebrush--skiers of the purple sage! The only minor avalanche problem was wind slabs along the ridgeline cornices, which I could stomp and easily trigger soft slabs 10 feet down into the oak brush. What a thrill. But the point is, that if you don't want much avalanche hazard, there's always the low elevation terrain in the foothills. Low danger where we were.