Wow... what a Uinta snowpack! It's taken a minute or two, but finally... our pack is deep, solid, and stable. The big Christmas storm was the game changer not only with snow, but more importantly with big water numbers or what we call SWE... snow water equivalent. So, here's the setup- for a couple of weeks we received a tremendous amount of water weight, storm snow, and nuking winds and all this additional weight and stress was like parking a battleship on top of the weak, sugary base. Yes... some terrain teetered on the edge of failure, some big slopes naturally avalanched, and some others held tight. There were a few surprises early in the season, but fortunately everyone came out unscathed with a new found understanding of our snowpack structure.

Now the good news... the pack is happy in its own skin and it's time to slowly start stepping into big terrain. And while all the stability indicators align to suggest Green Light conditions, always take a moment and dip a toe into the water before diving head first. Start with mini golf terrain and see how it's reacting before committing to dive head first into a big line.