I hadn't been out for a while so I wanted to get a sense of what was out there before the first real storm in what seems like eons arrives and dumps on it the existing snowpack. It's a bit daunting: if it's not windjacked it's suncrusted, and if it's protected/sheltered it's already getting faceted. So the new - and what sounds like pretty heavy - snow will be dropping on a variety of surfaces, all of which may create a good avalanche layer, with the possible exception of south facing, because it seems like a lot of times warm storms' snow seems to stick fairly well to sun crusts? But beyond that....it'll be really complex, and for a simpleton like me, that means it'll be scary. And that will just be the new snow; there's no doubt that either the weight of the new snow itself will be prone to move, but it could either overweight the poor underlying structure, or a new-snow slide could create another 2-foot step down, creating a biggy.

Of course we need more snow and we'll take what we can get, and a warm storm with dense snow will help our desperately-needy base, but based on what I saw today it'll be quite difficult to tell what will slide when, so slope angle will be the only controllable component. Everyone will be pushed into the higher-elevation low angle not exposed terrain, and it'll be a weekend so that'll intensify the intensity even more, but so it goes....