The hardest part - is all the slopes are not as hair trigger anymore, and the collapsing is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. However, you don't want to let your guard down with this type of avalanche problem. These persistent slab avalanches are what we call unmanageable and unpredictable, all you need to do is find a weak spot in the snow-pack collapse the slope (whoomph) and then propagate a fracture (crack) and now were possibly caught, carried, injured or killed in the avalanche.

Most slopes are just hanging in balance waiting for the weary wonderer to jump in. It would be a mistake to jump into a line just because there are tracks on the slope. Its easy to make this mistake because of all the traffic we have in our mountains. I saw plenty of slopes being skied today that I personally would have no part in.

To me the word Considerable is a funny word... What does it really mean? Tom Kimbrough (legend) in one of my first avalanche classes years ago told me this about considerable danger. He said " If I told you that if you walked into that bar over there that you had a considerable chance of getting your ass kicked, would you still walk in? "

This funny story has stuck with me ever since. It is really the same for the mountains, dropping into a shady upper elevation slope approaching 35 degrees in steepness you have a considerable chance of getting your ass kicked in an avalanche.