Incremental snow loading combined with wind has kept us in a holding pattern as far as avalanche conditions are concerned. Roughly 30" of snow has fallen over the past week and it's settling into a cohesive soft slab over top of our weak, underlying snowpack. Outward signs of instability such as cracking and whumphing are not widespread, but reports are trickling in (see this observation from Ed Grote). This indicates that the weak layer is failing under the overriding slab. In the wind zone, shifting winds have alternately stripped and loaded a variety of aspects. On northerly facing slopes, soft and hard slabs of wind drifted snow 1'-2' thick have developed. In these areas, human triggered avalanches are likely to step down into buried weaker layers. The bottom line is that we are going to need to tread lightly over these buried persistent weak layers for awhile, and that means generally avoiding steep, W-N-E facing terrain.

Keep those observations coming in! For a list of recent observations go here.

Settlement cones around the base of trees and these young aspen shoots indicate how much the low density snow from last weekend has settled and consolidated.