The backcountry, it's getting sketchy...
 

Things are getting nasty or are about to get nasty for most of us in the West. Check your local avalanche center for conditions. The dreaded black rose is appearing for most areas above 7k in the PNW. Can you say deadly? Other elevations appear to be all red. "High" avalanche danger. No question there will be avalanches if you travel in the wrong terrain.

Utah and Colorado are just starting to get hammered. Both states snow packs are absolute crap. Large propagating avalanches are going to be the norm for the next few days. The facets are probably going to be a persistent problem for weeks if not months in either state. It won't take much to trigger these.

If you don't know your local avalanche centers website, Avalanche.org has them all linked on the map on it's homepage.

If you haven't been paying attention to the daily reports, now would be a good time to do so.

Make good decisions out there.

Here is a fun video to show how awesome we got out it out here. Mind you this is before the storm we are about to get. Looks for sure like it will be an inbounds weekend with hoping for BC turns next week.

Holy crap at that video! It's hard to tell from the video, but that honestly doesn't even look like what one would normally even consider avy terrain. Certainly doesn't look 30 degrees from me based on that video.

You'll find me inbounds pretty much exclusively for quite some time. I'm not experienced enough to fuck with this bullshit.

The ridge line they were on of course was not but where it slid was. They were about to initiate the slide below them and off it went with a 3' crown and all. It will be scary out there for sure.

That is ugly, no doubt. Not a slope your typical Utah backcountry skier would consider dangerous too.

I'll be getting out Sunday, but terrain selection will be seriously limited. Fortunately, there are a lot of safe options at Bert even on high avy danger days. Of course there are a lot of deadly options too. I'll take the former please.

Gotcha. I hate videos when you're looking straight up or straight down a slope. Pretty much impossible to get a good feel for the angle of the terrain.

I hope the forthcoming storm jerks everything down and we start over....

That's about the best option at this point.... Still won't be seeing me doing much on my board for a while.

A skier died in Aspen in an avalanche not three hours after this thread was started. RIP Not seeing anything on CAIC about it yet but here's the Denver Post article: http://www.denverpost.com/breakingne...431?source=rss

2 things, so I have no BC experience is this considered a slab avalanche? also when it slid it seemed to stop rather quickly, is this because the terrain was not as steep as some other avalanches i have seen?

Vibes to the skiers family RIP

Still very little info on this. John Snook from CAIC put a tweet up about it yesterday before I signed off for the day. Not 100% sure, but it sounds like a skier got carried over cliffs and buried. The CAIC should have a preliminary report up later today.

A snowboarder was also killed, though not avalanche related. Sounds like he pinballed off of some trees and was impaled through the chest by a branch. Brutal.

RIP to those souls.

I won't say don't get out, but those who do, it's really time to watch your terrain selection and angles. If you can't dial it back, don't go out. Everything is at the tipping point right now.

*Edit the CAIC Preliminary report*