Saturday's deep, dangerous, slide exemplifies the fact that things are still spooky and unpredictable on the eastern front. Remember- last weeks Solstice storm put a huge amount of weight on a fragile, weak snowpack. Sure a lot of steep terrain avalanched naturally throughout the storm cycle, but still many slopes wait for us to come along and knock the legs out from underneath... and here's the tricky part. You can probably ride plenty of steep slopes and not trigger a slide and think you're good to go. However, the kind of avalanche dragon we're dealing with- DEEP SLABS- often let you get well out onto the slope before you find a weakness in the pack, collapse the slope, and then BOOM... or in this case WHOOMPH, you're staring down the barrel of a very dangerous slide. Making matters more complicated is you can often trigger a slide of this magnitude from low on the slope, as was the case in the Double Hill slide. Since there's so many variables with huge consequences if we screw up, the way I deal with this kind of avalanche dragon is patience and avoidance. Patience- I know eventually the snowpack is gonna heal, it just needs time. Avoidance- I stay off of and out from under steep slopes, but still have a blast on low angle terrain away from anything steep above or connected to where I'm riding. Done and done!

Click HERE to view a viddy that pretty much sums up what we're dealing with.

Down at the arcade... not a very friendly pinball alley. Trees become baseball bats as the avalanche slams us into them going 40 or 50 mph. Remember- trauma smokes 1/4 of us when we get caught in a slide... what a miserable way to exit this earthly existence.