Westerly winds increased overnight and should have formed slabs of wind-drifted snow this morning. Look for and avoid these fresh wind slabs under ridge lines and along cross loaded ridges. These slabs could be easy to trigger this morning but are an easy problem to avoid if you look for it.

Another reason to avoid these wind loaded areas is that they may have added just enough weight and stress to the snowpack to cause an avalanche to break on weak faceted snow near the ground. I don't expect this to be an issue in the upper Cottonwood canyons where the snowpack is 3-4 feet deep. I would be more concerned about this issue in other areas where the snowpack is about 2-3 feet deep.

Pay attention to how the new snow feels under you feet and how it is bonded to the underlying snow surface. In many places the new snow landed on several inches of graupel that fell on Wednesday but should be well bonded today. In some places underneath very steep slopes, that graupel snow may have rolled downhill and made a thick layer of graupel that may not be well bonded yet. In these isolated places, you could get a shallow soft slab of new snow to release. Otherwise, the new snow may just sluff in very steep terrain.