Intentions today were to avoid upper elevations which were likely quite wind affected. Route today included ascending Reynolds and skiing NE aspect off of the summit as well as Little Water Trees. Elevations were < 9500'

5-10 cms in itself is not going to affect snow stability, but was curious how the westerly winds were loading E/NE aspects with a very weak snowpack underneath. Was finding fresh cornices on east-facing ridges up to 45 cms thick and somewhat sensitive to cornice kicks. Also finding a few small shallow wind drifts that would crack locally with a ski cut. Normally, such a small wind affected snow event would hardly be noticeable, but with wind drifts forming upon a super-weak snowpack, wind drifts could be quite sensitive and even a small slide could step down to a buried weaker layer.

However, from what I was seeing this morning at elevations < 9500', there was not enough new snow (as well as transport from pre-frontal winds) to create widespread wind drifts. For the most part, new wind-drifted is limited to small, shallow pockets and were easy to identify and ski cuts are an effective mitigation technique. However, I wouldn't mess around with any steep N through E slope with recent wind drifts given the poor snow structure underneath. For example, we were going to ski a line off of the E-facing Reynolds summit, but I did notice some drifting about 15 meters (50') down off of the ridgeline so avoided that line and instead moved to terrain that wasn't wind-drifted.

At the 8K - 9.5K elevations we were traveling today, I would call the hazard Moderate.