No big change in avalanche conditions from Tuesday. Wind drifted snow remains the main focus. Fresh drifts and slabs may break within the upper layers of the most recent storm snow. There was an inversion in the top two layers of snow that was failing and producing avalanches over the previous weekend. This issue should be settling out and stabilizing. However, we saw more wind yesterday which drifted more snow which added more stress. So, the deal for today is that you may trigger one of these fresh drifts or slabs if you are poking around on steep slopes. .

Numerous layers of weak sugary snow plague the Skyline snowpack. I was decending through the woods on a snowbike yesterday and it was all I could do to keep the machine or me from augering into the bottomless sugar. The reason we're not seeing widespread avalanches breaking into these layers is that we just haven't gotten a significant new load of snow.

That said, areas where the wind has drifted snow are areas where you could trigger a deeper avalanche today. It's a tenuous situation. Not all slopes will release but it's almost impossible to say for certain which slopes will stay in place and which won't.

Personally, I can't try to thread the needle and analyze every steep slope to try and determine if I can get onto it. I know the snowpack is junk all over the place so I'm biding my time until I see stable conditions. I'm sticking to low angle terrain until conditions change.