A few days ago I went for a short backcountry tour with my wife. After a brief climb from the Eaglecrest Ski Area parking lot, we reached the bottom of the Wedding Bowl and started to ponder where to ski. We were too late to ski east-facing slopes. These aspects have seen too much sun already and would be too wet to ski safely. South- and west-facing slopes were still frozen. Slopes facing north had dry winter snow with crust on top. Without too much time to time to kill, we could not wait for the southerly aspect to thaw and soften.

Early in my career I was working as an avalanche forecaster for a ski area in New Zealand. One stormy morning, we headed to an area called South Face to do avalanche control. We assumed that we would encounter unstable snowpack and trigger several avalanches.

On Feb. 1, I was working on Mount Roberts with a group of students taking an advance avalanche course. The weather above the tram was windy with sub-freezing temperatures. At the same time, in town, it was warm and rainy. While we were traveling we could see several different types of avalanches run at the same time on different elevations. Later that day we found out that one of those avalanches ran across Thane Road and closed it for several hours.

Whenever I go into the backcountry, I use a holistic approach to evaluate the snowpack. I start to seek clues and insights into the state of the snowpack in the mountains with my morning coffee. I start my day checking recent weather and the forecast on the Internet (my first stop is Juneau’s National Weather Service website: pajk.arh.noaa.gov). On my way to the trailhead, I look around, searching for recent avalanche activity, check-in with friends to find out if they saw any avalanches, and often stop by the ski patrol to ask about results from recent avalanche control work.