With the regards to the upcoming storm: As the snow starts to add up in the latter hours of Saturday and into the early morning of Sunday, I would expect most of the avalanches will be confined to the new snow / old snow interface. This is because the snow on the surface over the past week has grown weak and faceted. It's very evident as you skin/walk up hill, it's very slippery and hard to hold a side hill. The other clue that makes me notice the snow is faceted is that the riding has only gotten better on the shady slopes - it's classic loud powder.

Faceted snow: only exists on the shady slopes - I was finding weak surface snow all the way down to 6,500' in elevation today. West, northwest, north, northeast, and east at the mid and upper elevations are most suspect. The strong solar aspects have a crust due to the strong sun melting the snow surface and refreezing it at night. On the sunny aspects I was not finding any faceted snow.

Shallow snow pack zones: We will have to keep an eye on the outlying areas outside of the upper cottonwoods. In places where the snowpack is less than 1.5 meters (5 feet deep) it has the possibility to have an avalanche that breaks into a deeper weak layer as the storm snow starts to add up.

Photo: Over looking Storm Mountain from Broads Fork. Beautiful day to be out.