The new snow landed on either bare ground on southerly aspects on top of 6 to 12 inches of older snow from October snow storms. The old snow consists of some stout melt freeze crusts and some loose sugary faceted snow. The old snow actually has enough body from the various crusts that it was somewhat supportable when walking on it with boots or skis. In other words, you didn't just sink right to the ground. With new snow on top of this old supportable snow, travel should be ok even though we don't have all that much snow yet.

My one concern is the old loose sugary snow. At this point, it is not a huge concern but worth a mention. There is enough old sugary snow that could act as a weak layer under the new snow and as we add more layers on top. This is highly speculative at this point as I have not had a chance to get into the mountains since we've added new snow on top of this old snow. My gut tells me this is not much of an issue at this point in time. All I really know at this point is that there is some old weak snow around on the higher elevation northerly facing slopes and that we've added up to 14 inches of new snow on top of it. The wind was strong enough to drift the snow a bit also. So, if you were to find trouble today, these are the ingredients you'll need:

In reality, it is unlikely that people will trigger avalanches today because it is difficult to travel and get onto a slope that has all of those factors.