Here's a video of the weak snow surface. This was taken at 6800' on a NE aspect, but it's very consistent with what I've seen in several zones in the Ogden mountains in the past week or so.

Description of top 12" of snowpack in video:

Top 4-6": Weak Fist-Hard near surface facets. Some areas have small surface hoar. There's a thin decomposing crust below.

There's more F to 4F facets below the crust, about 4" thick.

And a more stout crust below around 10-12" below the surface.

I also noticed how slippery the snow surface is when setting a new skin track. Lots of sliding backwards even on "barely" steep slopes.

Solar aspects at low and mid elevations (up to at least 8000' or higher) have sub-par conditions. Most of what I've seen is dust on crust.

Exposed ridgelines look like a moonscape similar to Brian Smith's obs from yesterday.

In general, the snow seems weaker at lower elevations likely due to the cold temps and lingering inversion. And being sheltered from the last few wind events.

Much of the near-surface snowpack at upper elevations seems somewhat stronger just because it's been worked so much by the wind. Conditions are highly variable in wind affected zones and quickly changes from soft NSF skiing to breakable crusts to very hard wind slabs. Lots of cross loading and pockety wind slabs and pillows. Some wind swept areas are quite thin from erosion and the snowpack is weakening in these areas. Examples are mid elevation sub ridges where gullies are filled in and too hard to penetrate with skis, but the adjacent slope is rippled, thin and very weak.

Thoughts on the incoming storm:

It's really a mixed bag out there and it's gonna be difficult to predict what's under the new snow and your feet after the storm.

Mid and lower elevations have very weak surface snow and crusts to enhance propagation. If storm stays cold and we get rapid loading of heavy dense snow, we could have a very active period for avalanches.