Every slope I walked on yesterday responded with big, booming collapses, and cracks shooting everywhere, suggesting we've got a dangerous setup in our snowpack and we don't need to be on steep slopes in order to trigger avalanches.... we just need to be connected to them. And while the light, fluffy, surface snow doesn't feel very threatening, we've gotta think not only about the snow we're riding in, but also the snow we're riding on. Now 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 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

Recent winds have been all over the compass leaving some slopes resembling a moonscape, while other slopes look very inviting with a little fresh snow, camouflaging recent drifts, making them harder to detect. So... let's think like the snowpack and consider the most likely place we'll stumble onto recent drifts is on the leeward side of upper elevation ridges. But, since winds were all over the compass late in the weekend, terrain features like chutes and gullies may be cross-loaded and should be considered suspect. 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.