Nothing has changed on this front... 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.

Yesterday's strong winds were all over the map and formed sensitive slabs on nearly every upper elevation aspect. While this is generally a manageable avalanche problem, things could get out of hand quickly if the small wind drift you trigger breaks into weak sugary snow near the ground. Today you'll want to look for and avoid wind drifted slopes, especially if they appear fat and rounded or sound hollow like a drum. In addition, clues like shooting cracks are great indicators of unstable snow.If you're hopping from one drainage to another or changing aspect and elevation, tweak small test slopes and road cuts to see how they're reacting before getting after big terrain.