It's straight up tricky out there, and here's why. Mid and upper elevation northerly terrain offer the best riding but also the greatest hazard because a dense, cohesive slab rests on top of weak, faceted snow that formed during the dry January spell. It’s strong snow over weak snow and that’s a dangerous combo. We can trench multiple sets of tracks on a slope without triggering an avalanche. But all we need to do is find a weakness where the slab and weak layer are susceptible to our additional weight as a rider, maybe around a rock or a bush, collapse the pack, and now we have triggered an slide we did not bargain for.

My go-to and only tool for this set-up is avoidance. Complex terrain that is steep, rocky, and shallow on the north half of the compass is still off the table -- I can not outsmart this problem, so avoidance is my go-to tool for this dragon.

Above is the slide on Duchesne Ridge that produced SUV-size chunks of debris stacking up deep in the runout and trees below. Getting caught up in a slide like this could potentially be game over -- Trees turn to baseball bats, and debris chunks are like boulders coming down on top of you.

Over the past 24 hours winds blowing from the west half of the compass have loaded leeward slopes on the east half of the compass at and above treeline. As a rider it's possible to trigger a hard-slab wind drift today, and I'd expect them to be pockety and stout, failing 1-2' deep in steep, rocky and exposed terrain in the windzone. There are lots of variable snow surfaces out there, but winds blowing in the 40,50's and gusting into the 60 MPH category will always find some snow move around. Remember, any avalanche triggered can step-down into buried weak layers within the snowpack, triggering a larger avalanche than we signed-up for.

Fortunately, this is a very manageable avalanche dragon to identify and an equally easy one to avoid. Simply steer clear the windzone or avoid fat, rounded pillows of snow, especially if they look textured and feel hollow.

Above, red arrows indicate rolling snow that is loading leeward slopes at mid and upper elevations. The black arrows indicate a few of the things to look for when trying to identify and avoid todays hazard.