I haven't been able to get into the more northerly facing terrain since the series of storms started on Thanksgiving. I'm happy to report that it was too deep for easy travel today and I was not able to look at as many slopes as I'd hoped. I'm not happy to report that I was able to get to a few slopes and was able to confirm my fears. The old snow from Oct and early Nov is faceted and is now collapsing under the weight of the new snow plus a human trigger. I experienced some collapsing in areas where there was only a few inches of this old faceted snow which kind of surprised me.

The take home is that it's suicidal to get onto any steep northwest, north and northeast facing slopes above 9500'. East facing may be semi-suspect as well. I'll get a better handle on that over the next few days. Basically, stay off any slope where you find old sugary snow near the ground.

This stuff will most likely settle out eventually and won't pose a threat all winter. The more storms we get, the faster this will happen but it's going to be a little while until we see these slopes stabilize.