Recent storm snow, water weight, and wind are waking up deeply buried, persistent weak layers in our snowpack. I don't think the roof is collapsing just yet, however, we are teetering on the edge and many steep slopes hang in the balance just waiting for us to come along and knock the legs out from underneath.

Now here's the problem... anything "persistent" in a snowpack takes a long time to heal and that's where it gets a little tricky. As the weak layers near the ground grow slightly stronger and get comfortable in their own skin, the snowpack can handle slow, incremental changes. And that means not every slope is ready to come unglued. As a matter of fact, you can ride some steep slopes, often without incident, thinking we're good to go, giving us a false sense of snowpack stability. However, all we need to do is find one weakness, maybe around a bush or rock that we can't see buried underneath the snow, collapse the pack, and now we're staring down the barrel of a scary avalanche. The way I'm avoiding this scenario is by simply avoiding the terrain where this setup exists- steep, upper elevation, north facing slopes that harbored snow prior to the big Thanksgiving storm. With plenty of safe options, there's no reason to pull on the avalanche dragons tail.

But wait... here's the good news. There's a lot of terrain to ride today and not have to deal with unmanageable avalanche conditions, IF you chose slopes that had NO old snow prior to the big Thanksgiving storm.

Our pit profile on a northwest facing slope near Wolf Creek Bowl. Pretty clear to see a defining line of strong snow resting on top of weak snow near the ground.

Yesterday, Bo and I stomped around near Wolf Creek Pass prior to our avalanche class last night and found our snowpit stability tests suggest a strengthening snowpack (good news), but failures continue to revolve around weak, basal snow (bad news). What this means is... it might be harder to initiate a slide, but the piece of snow you trigger will dangerously break to the ground.

Winds have been cranking and there's no shortage of snow available to blow around. I expect widespread drifting along the leeward of upper elevation ridges and around terrain features like chutes and gullies. As even more snow stacks up and winds continue blowing, fresh drifts may break slightly wider and deeper than you might expect. Your best bet for avoidance is to simply steer clear of any fat, rounded piece of snow, especially if it looks chalky or sounds hollow like a drum. In addition, look for and listen to clues like whoomphing sounds or shooting cracks in the snow which are sure signs of unstable conditions.