Last week in the same zone it seemed that the stability seemed to increase with elevation; today was not the case with the slab from last night's infamous winds being better-formed the higher we climbed, and the slab sat on top of a weird layer of dirty snow; see pic. Was there actually dirt from Nevada that got blown over here? Seems like most of the west is under snow at this point, so where did this dust come from? It formed a kind of icy-type layer, and the slab was failing below it with easy pull effort. Again, weird. We got a tiny bit of cracking and a couple of mild ridgetop whoomphs. But the slab and the easy shear of it made us keep our decisions pretty conservative; we didn't want anything to move, esp at the lower elevations of that where the pressure might step down to the notorious PWL. However, it seems like the water weight of the last few storms and some of the layers of slab development that we have seen "may" be enough to support the weight of the skier without avalanching? However, we haven't been doing as much sniffing around on steeper slopes at lower, more-protected slopes where there's less cushion between a skier and that PWL. So stay higher than low, but not so high/exposed as to get onto wind-loaded stuff....for at least a bit o' time til the 'pack adjusts to the weight of the big windloading event?

Again, the snowpack is a complicated equation these days which continues to make us cautious, but at least we are getting plenty of snow and we have been pretty inversion-free....