The writing is on the wall and it's pretty clear... as a matter of fact, a series of red flags waved in our faces yesterday. Thunderous collapses, shooting cracks, and the biggest sign of avalanches.... AVALANCHES!

So here's the deal- the snowpack is complex, we have a persistent weak layer in the mid portion of the pack, and this fragile structure just experienced a rapid change.

No, the range didn't come unglued, in fact, many slopes hang in the balance waiting for a trigger like us to roll along and knock the legs out from underneath. This is the setup where the wheels come off the bus because we can trigger slides from the flats, low on the slope, from a distance, or from adjacent slopes. We don't need to be on the slope... just connected to it.

This is the kind of avalanche dragon where we pull the entire log pile down on top of us, even if we're playing on low angle terrain.

But you don't have to ride blind... so, tweak small test slopes, 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.

Winds are always the game changer on the eastern front and Tuesday's storm winds fell in line with that successful business model... they were all over the map, forming fresh, sensitive slabs on nearly every aspect of the compass. Sure, think things settled and won't be quite as touchy today, but we still need to avoid any steep wind drifted slope not only along the leeward side of ridges, but also around terrain features 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.