It’s that time of the season when those of us who are brave enough to maneuver around the shallowly buried rocks and stumps are eager to get out and immerse ourselves in the snow for the first time. As I age I’ve learned to be patient but I remember getting out on steep slopes the first chance I got. I’d take the rock skis or snowboard out and descend through new snow for the first time not being too worried about clobbering a few rocks. Often times I wouldn’t be too worried about avalanches either.

But the start of each season is different and it’s never too early to start thinking about avalanches. When there’s such little snow on the ground it’s actually hard to imagine that there can be much danger! Not the case so far this season. We’ve already gone through what I’d consider a ‘significant avalanche cycle’ and all the snow that’s been sitting out there for the last couple of weeks has turned into loose sugary snow that very well could act as a weak layer once it’s buried. It looks like that will happen this weekend with a fairly decent snow storm shaping up starting Saturday and lasting into early next week, perhaps producing a few feet of snow.

I could show you temperature gradient graphs from the last few weeks and photos of these faceted weak grains and photos of avalanches that failed on this weakness and all sorts of other evidence but I don’t need to.

My point is, we already know there is weak snow. We are anticipating this weak snow to get buried this weekend with a good amount of new snow. There are lots of people eager to get into the new snow. Can you see any potential problems with this set up? Check to make sure the lure of the new snow isn’t overriding your avalanche assessment.

This is, obviously, potentially a bad set up for those who are unaware of early season avalanche danger. It also poses a threat to those with more experience whose judgement is clouded by early season excitement of the new snow.

After last season’s meek offerings for powder I’m as eager as anyone to get some good riding. Here’s how I’m going to approach our current situation:

• Take a quick look at conditions up Little Cottonwood on Friday looking to see just how loose the current snowpack has become.

• Let the new snow pile up

• Perhaps poke around a bit on Sunday and Monday in safe terrain to see how the snow is reacting to it’s new load. I’m not planning on doing any real riding during the storm.

• Once the storm starts to wind down and visibility is better, I’ll get out to a bunch more terrain to see how things fared during the height of the storm looking for any natural activity that occurred. I’ll walk around a lot seeing if I experience any “collapsing” or “whoomping” of the snowpack. I’ll poke and prod at drifts and cornices looking for sensitivity.

• Regardless of what I find, I will probably not get onto any steep slopes that had enough previous snow to act as a weak layer. I’ve seen too many bad signs to screw around on those slopes. (This is the hard part since this type of terrain has the best coverage!)

• Perhaps if we get enough snow I may try to make a few runs on slopes where I’m 100% sure there was not enough old weak snow to act as a weak layer.

My bottom line is I’m basically going to let this storm add snow and then let the snowpack settle a bunch before doing, what I consider, much real riding. I’m optimistic that perhaps IF the storm really produces AND we continue in a decent storm track, these early season faceted weak layers will be a short lived deal. That’s total speculation and yet to be seen. In the meantime, treat this as a serious situation and have patience.

KOWBOY aka Brett Kobernik

Photo: Bo Torrey, Silver Fork, November 15th, 2014