A few cms of recent snow is sitting on a variety of hard surfaces in the alpine from crust on solar aspects to hard windslabs. Also, some pockets of very soft windslabs have developed due to wind transported snow. It has been reported that these windslabs are reactive to skier traffic. At lower elevations, the thin layer of light dry new snow has buried the late January surface hoar at and below treeline. Cold alpine temperatures are
facetting the surface snow at higher elevations and lower elevation N aspect shallower snowpack areas is facetted to the ground in some areas. Deeply buried weak layers continue to exist, the recent report of a natural avalanche running to the ground in basal facets on a very steep N facing slope in the alpine is a good sign of this.