Early snows are creating scary snowpacks. Be careful!

[rideit]

Good day to just go for a 'last' singletrack bike ride today, anyhoo!

[Lindahl]

People give you shit about early season storm rants because your opinion and my opinion will not change whether the weather happens. The idea that there's even an argument to have about thumbs up/down for early season storms is just silly. They will happen, or wont happen, end of story. Add to that, it's not the storms that are the problem. It's the weeks of cold clear weather that follow. If it just kept storming, like it sometimes does in the PNW, there's no avalanche problem.

Here in the Wasatch, it's the same story as pretty much every year: Oct storms followed by Nov high pressure, followed by a return to winter. If this year follows patterns of the last six+ years, then a month from now high elevation N and E facing will have decent coverage but be sketchy in many places. S/W aspects will be facet-free but shallow. Mid elevation, moderate angle lines will be the name of the game for a bit. Then people will get bored of skiing 30 degree glades and someone will go for a ride. Then the Wasatch will gets some big, wet storms and more alpine terrain will be good to go, maybe in January but some years not until March. Early season facets are responsible for many Nov/Dec avalanches, but by January some other persistent weak layer is usually the primary concern. Rinse and repeat for 14/15 season.

Dont be complacent out there, but this year's early snow wasnt an outlier either.

What he said. For most places in Colorado, add a couple months for when things get safer up high. You also need to watch out for larger storms re-activating shit layers once they're buried deep (early last April was a great example). Of course, avalanches happen for other reasons too, mostly on crusts with newish storm snow.

[The Gnarwhale]

Powder Mag posted a blog about early season skiing today that's on point, IMO. http://www.powdermag.com/stories/bac...ls-siren-song/ Cautionary and calculated without being all doom-n-gloom