The snowpack has settled and gained strength over the past few days of high pressure, but it's not "game on" out there. Deep Persistent Slab avalanches are a tricky beast and should be given respect. They are hard to trigger but could bring down the entire mountain-side. This is a tough situation. Even though we feel it is unlikely you will trigger one of these monsters, it's not impossible. The numerous pictures of broken trees and basin-wide avalanches are hard to clear from the mind, and serve as a strong reminder of what's lurking out there.
Avoiding travel below avalanche terrain is the only way to maintain a margin of safety. We are only four or five days out from the end of the avalanche cycle in the Front Range and Vail & Summit County zones. On March 17, mitigation work triggered a very large avalanche in Summit County. That is just a few days that the snowpack has been settling down. It is not much time, given the massive size of the avalanches. Until we see avalanche activity completely quite down we are going to be stuck in this low-probability, high consequence problem.
Overhead hazard is something you should always be aware of, but particularly at times like this when the avalanche will be very large or historic in size. Avalanches have been running to the valley bottoms. Your best option to reduce this risk is to stay completely out of avalanche runout zones. This includes areas in thick timber where there are large avalanche starting zones above.
The snowpack in the Steamboat and Flat tops zone is different. Weak layers are buried very deeply or are nonexistent. We have seen little avalanche activity in this zone, certainly nothing like the rest of the Northern Mountains. Investigate slopes before riding, and remember LOW danger does not mean NO danger. Small avalanches can have out-sized consequences if they carry you over cliff or stuff you into rocks.