Despite an understated "moderate" danger rating by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC), the snowpack in the San Juan Mountains (and presumably throughout Colorado) is incredibly dangerous right now. Tender avalanche conditions are normal around here, but this season's snowpack is about as bad as it gets. There's a ~2 foot thick slab of recent snow from last week's big storm resting atop completely uncohesive faceted old snow. Basically the base of the snowpack is ball-bearings just waiting for a trigger to slide.

On Tuesday my friend Jason and I went for a backcountry tour and randomly met and became fast friends with Michael, a skier visiting from Liechtenstein! Michael joined us for two laps in a relatively safe zone, though we knew to avoid the wind-loaded convex rollovers that have buried people in the past. Another group up there that day wasn't quite aware of that and triggered a sizeable slide on exactly such a terrain feature. Fortunately nobody was caught though I'm sure that got their pulses racing!

Then on Wednesday the three of us headed out again, this time to explore a new route up a favorite peak. As we put in a skin track up a [safe] forested ridge, the snowpack was whoomphing, collapsing, and cracking around us. Very spooky. It's impossible to ignore such alarm bells from the snowpack, so it was a clear decision to abandon our initial plans and opt for a safer line of descent off the mountain.

That same day, a backcountry skier near Telluride triggered a large avalanche that swept him down through 1,000 feet of rocky, cliffy terrain. Miraculously he was uninjured and only partially buried.

Then on Thursday, tragedy inevitably struck when a skier was buried and killed by an avalanche near Ophir Pass.

All the while, the CAIC's avy report danger rating remains "moderate". I know that the CAIC doesn't want to cry wolf too often with overly alarmist avy ratings, but this season I can't help but question the value of distilling a very complex and variable snowpack into a one word danger level, especially when that rating significantly understates the lurking dangers. The CAIC's longer snowpack discussions in the daily avy reports always seem to be spot on and highly informative; but these days I pretty much just assume that the danger rating is higher than stated. In my mind, the dangers of the weak, faceted base of this snowpack will remain at least "considerable" probably until spring. Perhaps the avy danger ratings in times like this would be better summarized in a short sentence, or at least a few works, like "Deadly Moderate".

CAIC does fantastic work and I think they produce some of the best avy reports in the world. I would just encourage any backcountry skiers to always read their in-depth snowpack discussions instead of relying on a glance at the rating scales.

I hope that if even one backcountry skier/snowboarder is reading this, that I can be just a little nagging voice reminding you to always head the warnings of the snowpack, be flexible with your route and terrain choices, and err on the side of caution this season. That is all.