The snowpack is slowly healing, it's becoming slightly more comfortable in its own skin, and it's gonna give us a lot of false, green light feedback. The in yer face instabilities are gonna be more subtle. Gone are the days of loud, booming, tree shaking collapses and shooting cracks. In fact, the surface snow will ride like a dream, while the entire snowpack feels bomber and good to go under our skis, board, or sled. But we've gotta remember the mid January storm is a strong, cohesive slab resting on weak snow created during the mid December dryspell. And these are the exact conditions where we can ride plenty of slopes without incident, but find one slice of terrain where all the pieces align, knock the legs out from underneath, and the entire roof will caves in on us. Likely suspects include steep rocky slopes in the alpine with a shallow, weak snowpack.

Not widespread, but I bet there's a fresh wind drift or two that'll react to our additional weight. Found mostly on the leeward side of upper elevation ridges, don't be surprised with a drift or two lurking around terrain features like chutes and gullies.

While more the exception than the rule, older, stiffer drifts formed during the big January storm are still found in mid and upper elevation, leeward terrain. Remember... even a small wind drift can break deeper and wider than you might expect as it crashes down on the slope below. A good rule of thumb is to simply avoid steep, wind drifted, leeward slopes, especially if they appear fat and rounded or sound hollow like a drum.