The Valentine's Day storm has built a dense, cohesive slab on top of our weak, underlying snowpack. Outward signs of instability such as collapsing and whumphing are isolated at this point, but stability tests remain active. My recent tests on Monday show that avalanches can fail on multiple different weak layers and easily step down to the weak facets below, creating a very deep and dangerous avalanche. Avalanches that step down could take out the entire season's snowpack. The bottom line is that human-triggered avalanches up to 2 feet deep or more, failing on this weak layer remain highly possible. The danger is most acute on northerly and easterly aspects near treeline, but slopes below the treeline harbor the same poor snowpack structure. Travel advice is to avoid any slope steeper than 30 degrees where this problem exists.

As you wrap around to the west, the problem still exists and it's a fine line between shady and sunny. Many westerly aspects still present as northerly if there are trees to provide shade. West facing slopes should be considered guilty until proven innocent, and a slope by slope analysis is required.

There are multiple faceted weak layers in our snowpack to be concerned about. On this east facing slope, this failure occurred 2.5' deep.