The Skyline experienced a significant storm last week and a widespread avalanche cycle.... cause and effect, it makes sense right? Now the second half of the one-two punch is slated to arrive today as temperatures are forecast to soar into the upper 40's and the terrain facing the north half of the compass gets its first taste of spring-time warmth. Slopes that avalanched in December are especially suspect as they have a VERY shallow and weak snowpack. This is a dangerous situation because you can travel on a variety of slopes without triggering slides or seeing any obvious signs of instability. Problem is.... once triggered, today's avalanches have the potential to break deep and wide, especially in steep, rocky terrain.

This is the kind of terrain where you could trigger a deep, dangerous slide today.

Here's a great viddy Trent produced explaining the kind of avalanche dragon we're dealing with-

Persistent Slab Avalanches from Trent Meisenheimer on Vimeo.

The danger of wet avalanche activity on steep sunny slopes will rise with daytime heating. It's pretty straight-forward though. When the snow is feeling damp and gloppy, simply get off of and out from under steep, sun baked slopes. In addition, you'll want to avoid terrain traps like gullies and road cuts where bone snapping, cement-like debris can pile up very deeply.