Started my tour mid-morning from Alta going up to Cardiff Pass and over to Cardiac Ridge. The skies were clear and it was very cold in the shade but pleasantly warm in the sun, and no wind was present. The skin track up to Cardiff is pretty abysmal and the skiing is alright at best. The north and east facing slopes is where most of the snow is and where the facet issue is more severe. There is a variety of different facet-windslab-melt/freeze crust-light unconsolidated snow combinations out there right now which will make conditions very unstable when a good load is put on these slopes. The windslab and isolated melt/freeze crusts are pretty boilerplate now and will likely provide poor bonding with more snow; these have also created dense, buried layers within the snowpack. Some places have one buried layer, others have three; basically the snowpack conditions are so variable that we must assume that where there is snow there is instability. The recipe for avalanches are 1. a weak base 2. an unsupportable load on top 3. a trigger. At the moment, 2 & 3 are missing but when it finally does snow, #2 will be in play.

There is some good news though! Due to the winds and solar effect, many areas are down to the ground such as most south facing areas (Emma's and most BCC) as well as most terrain below 8k-9k feet. What this means for most of us is to start looking at where there isn't snow (therefore no facets) and think about what this means for when the snow finally does come.