I am like anyone else. I look up to different individuals in my life for advice, especially advice about the snowpack. Every mentor - friend - colleague - that I know and trust, continues telling me that the snowpack structure is no good. We have a massive slab (3-6 feet of dense strong snow) sitting on very weak sugary (faceted) snow at the ground, and slopes that face the north half of the compass that are approaching 35 degrees in slope steepness should be avoided.

This doesn't mean the season is over for us. In fact this is really good news! This past storm did wonders for us and eventually we can turn the corner to a deep homogenous (even layered snowpack). For now, it's not the time to get after the steep northerly facing terrain, we need to give the snowpack time to breathe and adjust to its new load.

The safest option is boondocking in the trees and meadows far away from anything steep. Most of the recent avalanches have been triggered low on the slope from riders carving powder below the hanging steep slopes above. Deep slabs are tricky because we can have many tracks on the slope before it decides to fail. Riding beneath steep shady slopes is like standing below a massive log pile and pulling the bottom log out.... having all the logs fall down on you.

(Deep dangerous avalanches can still be triggered - Photo: Ted Scroggin, Double Hill Sunday December 27th)

It's a bit complicated now because 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 lets 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.

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