Guilty until proven otherwise, Trevor pointing to an avalanche he and Andy safely triggered from a distance yesterday.

Above about 9,000' on slopes facing the north half of the compass, early season snow grew weak and sugary during the November dryspell and is now buried 1-3 feet beneath last weekend's storm. Our problem child, persistent slab avalanches, are found on shady, upper-elevation, rocky slopes and once initiated, can break 1-2 feet deep and a couple hundred feet wide. Yesterday, in addition to triggering avalanches remotely, our team of snowpros experienced multiple red flags, like cracking and loud, booming whoomphs. Remember, this is the kind of avalanche dragon we can provoke remotely or from a distance, meaning we don't have to be on a steep slope to trigger the slide.

Look, you don't have to be a snow scientist to take a deeper peak under the snowpack's hood and see what we're talking about. It's not a big dig and a quick shovel excavation reveals a strong, dense slab over weak, sugary snow. That combo creates a trap-door feeling when we're trenching our sled or ski track.

Recent winds have enough loose snow to work with and continue loading our weak snowpack structure. Over the past few days, fresh and sensitive drifts have been pressed into stiff hard slabs on the leeward sides of ridges and upper elevation slopes. Although stubborn, today's drifts will be 6-12 inches deep, and once triggered, could break deeper and wider than we might expect, falling on weak snow near the ground. It's a little tricky out there, but remember, we can steer clear of the hazard by looking for and avoiding wind-textured snow and fat, rounded pillows of snow on the leeward side of ridges and around terrain features like chutes and gullies.

A crew from a Level 1 avalanche course observes wind-textured snow and rounded pillows on a ridge near Wolf Creek Pass at 9,800'.