A good portion of Saturday was marked by unusually calm, windless conditions. But since the range is famous for the place that wind was invented, west and nothwest winds made their presence known late in the day and there's no shortage of light density snow to work with. Fresh drifts sensitive to our additional weight is today's most obvious avalanche concern and you'll find these newly formed pillows of snow on the leeward side of upper elevation ridges and around terrain features like chutes and gullies. Look for and avoid any fat, rounded piece of snow, especially if it sounds hollow like a drum. On steep, wind drifted slopes, today's slabs can break deeper and wider than you might expect and will easily boss you around.

Westin D was in the Humpy Creek drainage yesterday and found shallow soft slabs reactive to his additional weight. (Deutschlander photo)

Trickier and harder to detect is the possibility of triggering an avalanche that breaks into weak layers of snow, now buried deeper in our snowpack. There's a few variables out there right now, but what I do know is... we have a complex snowpack and this seasons history reveals that each time it snows, weak layers in our midpack wake up and we see a string of human triggered slides. While this storm didn't stack up huge water numbers, it did produce fairly strong winds late Friday which created a solid feeling, cohesive slab. Problem is... the snowpack will allow us to get well out onto the slope before it fails. Once triggered, a slide breaking into weak layers of snow now buried in our midpack, will quickly get out of hand and instantly ruin our day. The most likely suspects are steep, wind drifted slopes facing north half of the compass. Since this avalanche dragon is unpredictable, the best offense is a good defense... you simply avoid it. Swing around to lower elevation south facing slopes or choose low angle terrain with no steep slopes above or adjacent to the slopes your riding.