Strong southerly winds continue to blow and drift snow forming new slabs on top of old. Fresh drifts are easier to discern - they will likely be shallow and you may see cracking around your skis. Fresh drifts will be found on the leeward sides of ridge crests and terrain features such as gully walls and sub-ridges. Old, hard wind slabs are harder to identify and they may not release until you get well out on them. In general, you'll want to avoid steep slopes that have a smooth, rounded "fat" appearance or that sound hollow underneath. On slopes with a northerly aspect accumulating drifted snow has formed slabs 2'-3' thick that may also be overlying weak layers underneath.

In our travels on Saturday, we unfortunately discovered that the Valentine's layer we have been tracking has suddenly become reactive, likely due to incremental loading over the past several weeks. Travis Nauman confirmed this. He also observed areas with weak faceted snow near the surface, as well as areas where the underlying snowpack looked strong. Wind drifted snow has added more stress to this complicated picture and for now we need to assume that all northerly facing slopes steeper than 30 degrees are suspect, and that human triggered avalanches failing 1'-3' deep on a buried persistent weak layer are possible.

Photo illustrates a weak layer of faceted snow under a slab that we found over in the Corkscrew Glades on Saturday (10,100' NW aspect). An extended column test produced results of ECTP 21.

On a nearby slope we didn't find the upper faceted layer, but the Valentine's layer was alive and well producing a failure with a score of ECTP 26. Careful slope analysis is imperative right now, and you'll need to dig down close to 4' to determine the presence or absence of a weak layer.