On Thursday, Eastern front avalanche hunters Jason and Dave stomped around Upper Weber Canyon yesterday and found fresh wind slabs forming along the leeward side of upper elevation ridges (image pictured above). Reactive to the additional weight of a person, yesterday's slabs broke 12"-18" deep, failing on a layer of light density snow, and ran a surprisingly long distance. Dave noted.... "given the density of the new snow, the wind slabs were a bit more connected then would otherwise be expected with these wind speeds."

The Uinta's are a big range and while recent storm snow fell straight out of the sky, the light, blower pow is covering up old wind drifts formed on Thursday, making them hard to detect... and that's where it gets a bit tricky. While I think today's avy danger is pretty straight-forward, don't get fooled into thinking fresh, shallow snow instabilities are all you're dealing with. In upper elevation leeward terrain, underneath that fluff, lurks an old drift or two that may break deeper and wider than you might expect. The best way to manage this setup is to simply look for and avoid any fat, rounded piece of snow, especially if it sounds hollow like a drum.

The days are getting longer, temperatures are slowly warming, overall snow depths are becoming incredibly deep, and the snowpack is getting to its happy place.... as a matter of fact, so am I. We are trending in the right direction and recent snowpack stability tests along with the lack of avalanches failing on weak snow near the ground suggest we're turning the corner. That said... deep dangerous avalanches are becoming harder to trigger. All encouraging news for sure, but we've got to remember there's a lot of terrain that makes up the landscape of the western Uinta range and I'm not entirely convinced all slopes are good to go. The same kind of terrain I avoid early season still gives me the creeps right now. Steep, rocky, technical terrain with a thin, shallow snowpack remains suspect and there's no reason to tug on the dogs tail to see how it reacts, especially with all the other safe riding opportunities out there.