A general observation after a few days of skiing in varied places in Mill Creek and Big Cottonwood Canyon (I still haven't been able to figure out how to pay to park in upper LCC to access the public lands up there).

It's pretty rare that I've seen such widely-varying snow surfaces in the Wasatch. I told my pards yesterday that the high-pitched screech of steel edges on ice is becoming a common noise these daze, yet there are pockets of nice faceted powder on top of nice faceted powder along with nice faceted powder on top of a crust that will slide a ski off a skin track yet not support a boot. With plenty of corn on due south aspects, and even a 2" thick corny/melty crust on the transitional aspects at times, and then below about 8k it's turned to mush late day. Some sub-ridges (Gobbler's shoulder, Mineral) have gotten enough wind to have blown in/over the tired old bouncy tracks, but still with faceted powder.

From what the weather prognosticators say this next storm could drop up to a foot, and with some wind could lay down more on leeward aspects, and as such it could be tricky; to me the snow surface that it's falling on is so varied that it'll be hard to discern what will be a good sticky surface and what will be a good slick surface for the new snow to slide on; indeed, even looking at snow as I've been skinning up or skiing down it's been difficult for me to anticipate what it's going to be: barely-scratchable windjack, punchy crust, or nice faceted powder? So when new snow falls on all these surfaces - sometimes on the same aspect - how will it react? When it gets unpredictable I get pretty wary and treat slopes with respect. I hope we get plenty and the extended forecast for more dryness is not right, but it could be a bit whacky if there is much more than the few inches we got on Wednesday.