There's a clear trend with our recent string of deeply triggered slides. Each time the snowpack gets rapidly loaded with snow, water, and wind we see avalanches breaking to the ground. The crazy thing is, it's April and we should have a strong solid snowpack, but this year it's different and the cold dryspell during January sealed the deal, helping to create and then preserve a very weak layer of sugary snow. Click here for a video describing the setup.

Making conditions more sketchy is that you can ride plenty of slopes and be good to go, but if you find the right combination of strong snow overlying weak sugary snow chances are you're gonna collapse the slope and be staring down the barrel of a very dangerous slide. Our problem child hasn't gone away and steep, rocky slopes remain suspect. If you're travels take you onto a snowpack that feels punchy and you find yourself sinking into weak sugary snow, carefully evaluate the kind of terrain you're headed to and the kind of terrain you're connected to. Rather than complicating matters, you can avoid avalanches altogether and still have a blast carving on low angle slopes today.

There's no shortage of light density storm snow to blow around and the east-northeast winds are raging along the ridges. Blowing from an unusual direction, today you can expect to find sensitive drifts forming in unusual locations, especially in terrain with a westerly component to its aspect. In addition, look for and avoid fat, rounded pillows of snow on any steep slope and remember that terrain features like chutes and gullies have been crossloaded by the wind. While todays fresh slabs may seem mostly manageable, once triggered it's gonna be a different story and they'll be packing a punch. It's a good day to tweak small test slopes and road cuts to see how they're reacting before getting after big terrain.

Our main man Ted Scroggin took this series of pics yesterday near Moffit Peak which clearly illustrate the new snow instabilities.