Chad Brackelsberg, Executive Director for the UAC, stomped around Mt. Watson yesterday and posted the great viddy above, which illustrates our current setup. His entire trip report is found here.

Persistent weak layers... they're are a pain in the pack because they linger for long periods of time. And recent history tells us that every time we stack up additional snow or windload to our fragile snowpack, we see human triggered avalanches. Problem is... nothing's changed with this problem child because we're not getting plastered with big storms, or the dense, heavy snow needed to help add a thick, insulating coat to our snowpack. As a matter of fact, we're getting nickeled and dimed with just enough snow to keep the weak layers teetering on the edge. So here's the setup. The snowpack foundation mirrors an upside-down cake... think, stronger snow on weaker snow. This type of layering leads to tricky avalanche conditions because there's not widespread, in-your-face, natural avalanche activity. Rather, our snowpack needs a trigger like us to roll along and knock the legs out from underneath. And yes... we can trigger slides from a distance or from adjacent slopes, and this is the type of avalanche dragon where we can pull the entire log pile down on top of us, even if we're playing on low angle terrain. All we need is to be connected to steep terrain above us. And once triggered, today's avalanches may break wider and deeper than you might expect.

But you don't have to ride blind... so, tweak small test slopes like the one in the image above, looking for and listening to signs of unstable snow like whoomping sounds and sudden collapses of the snowpack or shooting cracks in front of your skis, board, or sled. And of course the biggest clue of all... recent avalanches, especially on the same types of slopes you wanna ride on.

With some fresh storm snow for winds to work with, I bet today's drifts are gonna be more widespread and more reactive to our additional weight. Found mostly on the leeward side of upper elevation ridges, 24 hours of consistent winds, drifted snow lower downslope than you might expect, and cross-loaded terrain like chutes and gullies. In either case, it's an easy and mostly manageable avalanche problem to avoid by simply steering clear of any fat, rounded piece of snow, particularly if it sounds hollow like a drum. And remember... our snowpack is super shallow and triggering even a small slide can take you for a body-bruising ride through rocks and stumps barely hidden under the thin snowpack.