We don't have any worries.
It's rock solid.
And we were facing like kind of maybe west, I think,
to be honest.
So we were early in the day.
I was like, it's not really going to heat up that much.
It's fine.
But then when we got way up high to the top of the pass,
the pass is two things.
It's higher, so it's colder.
But also it's a wind tunnel.
And so the wind always gets funneled through there
and kept the snow from getting as hot.
So we didn't have that bomber seven to five inches across.
And then we got down to like two to three inches across.
And the skiers who were able to do kick turns,
they were staying on top.
But because my crew wasn't so good at kick turns,
we were walking in crampons with skis on the back.
And we were punching through that eggshell crust.
And we hit the old snow layer and got avalanched.
Welcome to All Aspects, a podcast where we explore, discuss,
and celebrate adventure culture and outdoor lifestyle.
It is our mission to educate, inform, and entertain
our fellow adventurers about the inherent risks that surround
us every time we go outside to play.
And to provide you with the knowledge and tools
to help you do the things you love the most
and the safest way possible.
All Aspects is brought to you by Aspect Abbey.
Aspect Abbey is on a mission to save lives
by making avalanche safety simple.
It is the only app that tells you where the high and low risk
zones are for today's avalanche danger.
With a suite of built-in tools like forecast verification,
slope meter, and gear checklist, Aspect Abbey
is the new safety standard for avalanche risk management.
Remember, there are dozens of apps
that get you into the back country,
but there is only one that's designed to bring you home.
And that's Aspect Abbey.
Go to aspectabbey.com to learn more or download the app
to start your 30-day free trial.
Thank you, Aspect Abbey, for making this show possible.
And thank you for listening.
All right, let's get to the show.
Welcome back to All Aspects.
Jeff, today it's just you and me.
Nice to be back with just a Dave and Jeff show.
And this week, I wanted to talk about spring
skiing safety and risk management because we,
well, it's kind of ironic.
I just know it eight inches outside and supposed
to snow all weekend.
But before that, we were in a huge corn cycle.
We were getting like 45 degree days,
which was really, really nice.
But it does lead to a whole new set of problems and issues,
things that we need to keep track of and that sort of thing.
So I figured this week it'd be good for us
to cover ski touring and playing the back country
in the spring.
Maybe we could do a little bit of myth busting about snow safety
and that kind of stuff.
And then maybe give people some actionable,
some action items moving forward, easy things
that they can keep their eyes out for, et cetera.
How's that sound to you?
That sounds great.
Yeah, oftentimes in life, our perception
lacks behind reality.
It takes a while.
And we're in this weird situation right now where it's been,
this is probably going to go down as the hottest winter
on record throughout Colorado by a lot.
And like you said, this last week,
we were in a serious corn cycle with seven inches of melt
freeze crust we were riding on.
But that's only on the sunny aspects,
like south and southwest.
And if you go to the shady aspects, particularly in Colorado,
when you're on a steep slope like double black diamond, 30
to 45 degrees, it's not getting that solar gain.
And in Colorado, it's all about the sun
because it's so high and dry that if you're at, say, 11,000
feet and above, and you're on steep northeast, north
and northwest, it's going to stay cold, dry snow
until maybe the last week of April.
And then finally, if this is the steep north facing slope,
finally the sun, here we go, finally the sun
gets high enough in the sky that the solar radiation can
actually affect the snowpack.
Certainly on east, south, and west,
it'll have a big effect.
South and southwest are the most sun affected.
So it's like a tale of two cities right now.
You know, a lot of the steep slopes, the steeper the slope,
the more the sun hits directly.
And if it's low angle south facing,
it's more indirect and bounces off.
So those steep, low elevation, mid elevation slopes
are going to corn up the fastest.
But if the sun's on the other side and it's north facing,
it's the opposite.
The shallow, the flats and shallow slopes get more sun.
You get a little sun crust.
And then the steep ones are going to stay dry.
So basically what we've got is our persistence slab problem
is not really going away.
It's kind of a bummer.
And it's still being skier triggered on the aspects
that don't have a lot of corn.
Yeah, and can we just really quickly,
can we just kind of explain the breakdown of when
we are skiing on corn?
What we want to be looking for, right?
Because there is, well, especially here, right,
on that south facing, well, let's make this even more
specific.
So if we're going to go corn harvesting, right,
and we're going to stick to those south facing,
southwest kind of slopes that you're talking about,
we need to be really mindful that that ice bridge that we're
standing on the whole way up the face is thick enough
to support us, even if with like two inches of slush or like
corn on top of it, right?
Can you kind of explain why that is and how that works?
Sure.
Let's say there's some weak layers underneath.
Yeah.
And we're riding on top of seven inches of frozen corn,
and only the top two inches have melted,
and it's perfect skiing conditions,
and we've got five inches of ice that
are keeping us from impacting any old snow
layers that are underneath.
OK, and that scenario is pretty optimal.
And it's much different from, hey,
we've only got a two inch eggshell freeze.
And that happened this week where instead of having clear
nights, we had a little micro storm come in,
and it dropped about an inch or two,
and it was cloudy all night.
So it's like keeping a warm blanket on the snow pack
so that you don't get the cooling going out into space.
I'm going to stay away from jargon,
but that's the gist of it.
And so we had a micro freeze, and it melted super quickly.
And Frank and I were out, and we were just, I don't know,
we got like a dozen massive collapses.
And in some places, we'd sink all the way through the snow
pack if we were next to a trigger point,
like a sagebrush and stuff like that.
And then as we got higher up in the mountain,
the snow pack got deeper instead of being like 70
cms of kind of wet rotten facets with an eggshell freeze.
It was like a proper snow pack at like a meter 20,
and then even deeper.
And that lessened and lessened and lessened.
And so we want to be very careful that we know,
one, how thick is this ice bridge we're on that's protecting
us from the weak layers underneath?
And two, do we have weak layers underneath?
And so in different snow climates,
like if you're in the Arctic, like Norway or Iceland,
they can get rain every month of the year.
And so that snow pack is often ice hardness or pencil
hardness.
And so quite often in the Arctic,
you'll be like waiting for it to soften the corn,
and it softens, and it never gets dangerous,
or it never gets too mushy, because you're
riding on top of concrete.
So the whole snow pack, two meters,
is dense, basically almost ice or completely ice.
And if you contrast that to what Frank and I experienced
earlier this week, we were on a really shallow snow pack,
so 70 to 120 centimeters, where faceting and sugar crystals
are the dominant forms.
And so if that's the case, you've got to hit and get,
as we say in Vermont, you've got to get on it
and get off of there before your bridge starts to melt,
because your bridge is over a whole lot of garbage.
Whereas contrast that in Iceland or Norway,
where it's just rock solid underneath,
and you just wait for it to soften,
and then you can ski corn for the next eight hours
on the same slope, and often there's
no deterioration in stability or ski quality.
And you're like, oh, this is so weird.
And so if you look through the accidents, particularly
in a continental climate, like a dry, low snow climate,
like Colorado experiences, you'll
often see springtime wet slab avalanches,
where the water trickles down until it hits the weak layer,
and boom, the wet slab triggers.
And it's a little tricky when you're
coating an accident, for instance.
Was this an old snow problem, or was it a wet snow problem?
And you're like, well, the water trickled through,
caused the snowpack to weaken.
But when it hit the old snow problem,
that's where it really took off.
So it's the water weakening the bonds,
but when it hits the old snow problem, it's really bad.
And if you look through the accidents,
you'll often see that pattern, where it trickled down
until it hit the old snow problem,
and that resulted in the fatal avalanche.
Yeah, and also I wanted to touch on something you said about,
you and Frank, as you were going higher,
you're seeing the conditions change, right?
And you and I were talking about this the other day,
just because, say, everything from 9,000 to 10,000 feet
is awesome corn skiing, and has that nice 7-inch ice bridge,
if that slope doesn't mean that it's that same thickness
from 10,000 to 11,000 or 11,000 to 12,000,
like you have to actively be checking on that crust,
that surface bridge.
I think you were saying you were talking to some people
that were like, yeah, we're going to go ski corn up
at like 12,500 feet, and you're like, north basic.
You're like, what?
No, that's not how that works at all.
So just because it's spring doesn't mean,
if anything, now it makes the snowpack a little more,
it's all rounded, right?
You get different seasons, depending
on what your aspect is.
So it's like, yeah.
It is hyper variable, because oftentimes, south and southwest
is phenomenal corn skiing and really well developed,
whereas you could go around to the north side today
and find 22 inches of cold smoke.
And then you're like, oh, wow, it's hyper variable.
So trying to keep a mental model in your head
for snow stability is incredibly difficult.
And this might help visualize it for my fruit bowl.
So this is like below tree line, the 11 near tree line,
and this is above tree line.
So let's say we have southeast right now.
So below tree line, southeast is really well corned up.
And then at mid elevation, it's pretty well corned up,
but at high elevation, not really.
It's like a thin breakable crust.
And for a while, that was on the persistent slab problem
still, and I think they've trimmed it back in most places
in Colorado on Alpine southeast.
So that's like 11 to 12,000 feet above tree line.
So it's really important to remember,
you've got the elevation bands, and then you
got the different aspects.
And that is going to dramatically change.
And maybe a story to illustrate that is I had a near death
experience in Italy in the Ortler range,
and that's exactly what happened.
Below tree line, full springtime conditions.
I think this was the last week in April, something like that.
Fully developed corn.
Mid elevation, like near and above tree line,
south facing was corned up really well.
But then in the Alpine, egg shell freeze.
So when we started skinning up the slope,
I dug with my ice axe three times,
and it was 7 to 5 inches of frozen corn,
and we were crampawning up.
And I was like, we don't have any worries.
It's rock solid.
And we were facing like kind of maybe west, I think,
to be honest.
So we were early in the day.
I was like, it's not really going to heat up that much.
It's fine.
But then when we got way up high to the top of the pass,
the pass is two things.
It's higher, so it's colder.
But also, it's a wind tunnel.
And so the wind always gets funneled through there
and kept the snow from getting as hot.
So we didn't have that bomber 7 to 5 inches of crust.
And then we got down to like 2 to 3 inches of crust.
And the skiers who were able to do kick turns,
they were staying on top.
But because my crew wasn't so good at kick turns,
we were walking in crampons with skis on the back.
And we were punching through that eggshell crust.
And we hit the old snow layer and got avalanched.
So that is a really dramatic illustration
of how I almost got the job.
Because I didn't have a good mental model predicting ahead.
The snowpack where I am is going to be dramatically different.
1,500 vert, 1,800 vert above me because of the wind
and because of the elevation.
It's going to be significantly colder, much less corn.
And that should have changed.
Or I should have adapted what we were doing, either turn around.
But we were so close to home, I was like, oh, that'd be fine.
Everybody else is trudged across the slope.
It'll be great.
And the other part of the group was ahead of us.
And it was the last five minutes of a week-long tour.
And then we would noodle powder down to the hotel for beers.
And I was just like, I'm so tired.
It's always the last, like what?
You always get in an accident at the like a mile away from home.
I could smell the barn.
And the other half of the group with the other guide
was just ahead of us five minutes.
And they had no idea we got avalanched.
And they had already passed through.
And I was like, oh, it'll be fine.
I was pushed through.
Well, this time it wasn't fine.
And so when the conditions change, our actions need to change.
We need to adapt.
And I failed too.
And it almost cost me everything.
Well, so that's actually kind of a good, I guess not really
a segue.
But when we are, you could kind of use the mental model.
Like the further you go up, the thinner this sort of bridge
is going to get in general.
Yeah.
But that's why we want to, you know,
like we went out on a tour last week.
And we were cutting out squares the whole way up just
to check to see what we're dealing with.
And as we went up, it actually went from down.
Granted, we were in the flats when we did our first, you know,
whole, we were filming.
So we were kind of doing a show and tell.
But it was about that thick, maybe two to three inches.
And then by the time we got up into the glades, which obviously
much steeper like you were describing,
we were on like a seven, almost eight inch block
that you were pulling out of the ground.
So like that in our mind is like, OK, cool.
Not only is that a really good ice bridge,
but it's actually increasing as we're going up this face,
which is a great sign for us.
But I want to flip flop of that.
So like, because we just said two conflicting things, right?
Because like in general, the higher you go,
the thinner that bridge gets.
And less you're on a south face where you're like monitoring it.
And it's getting that direct sunlight.
And then ideally, as you get higher and that sun is just
beating down on it, then it's going to be thicker.
Is that sort of a general rule?
Or what can we take away from that?
So here's where we were.
We were in the mid elevation bands.
We were below tree line and near tree line.
And so it was more.
I think we topped out at 10,500 feet, something like that.
So we were not up in the alpine.
And it's very sheltered from the wind.
So the dominant factor was the slope angle, not the elevation.
And so when the sun was coming in on the flats,
most of that radiation hits at an oblique angle and bounces off.
And then we started climbing.
And it gets ever so gently steeper.
And we were like 19 degrees.
And we got like five inches of frozen corn.
And then when we got up to like 29, 30 degrees,
the hill got steeper, even though we were going higher.
And so it's a little bit cooler during the daytime.
The slope angle trumped the modest elevation gain.
Because we were only climbing.
I think we climbed 1,400 vertical feet, something like that.
Not that much.
Maybe 1,300.
So then it was the slope angle facing southwest.
And it was like about 30 to 40 degrees on the steep stuff
we were skiing.
And that stuff gets cooked.
And that's exactly why we went there.
Steep southwest facing below treeline, near treeline,
was the sweet spot.
We didn't have to tangle with the persistence slab problem.
Primo riding conditions, really low stress, high rewards.
Tight.
Hey, so I want to talk about like a term
that's thrown around a lot with spring skiing, which
is isothermic.
Can you?
I like, just can be fully honest.
That term means nothing to me.
I don't know what.
People start throwing that around and I like glaze over.
So can you?
Can you either?
I fucking hate jargon.
Because if you explain it to me, it's like.
Explain it to me?
It's like we're excluding people from the conversation
by using jargon.
Yes.
So let's break it down to the roots.
Iso means equal, thermo, thermal, thermic, temperature.
So they're saying the snowpack is all the same temperature.
And if you think about it, you're like, OK,
so the earth is putting out heat.
It's at like 48 degrees, give or take,
depending on where you are.
And that heat goes through the snowpack.
And if you have a thin snowpack, less than a meter and a half,
it causes the vapor to move in weird ways.
And it causes it to maybe be more vertically oriented,
you could say.
And so if you put your hands over your mouth,
like Darth Vader, like Luke, I'm your father.
So that's the water vapor.
And it will form facets, form diamonds.
And those do not want to hang out together.
It's like the worst party you've ever been to.
Like nobody is close.
It's cold.
There's no dancing going on.
There's no connections being formed.
You're like, it's an undersold concert.
Say it again.
It's an undersold concert.
Yeah, those are the worst.
Nobody's there.
Contrast that to a deeper, warmer snowpack over 1.5 meters.
And particularly if you're in place like the Northwest
or Sierras, it's going to be a lot warmer than Colorado.
You don't get minus 20, minus 30 very often.
And so in that case, it's like the best party you've ever been at.
And people are hugging each other.
Social bonds are being formed.
There's a lot of moisture and sweat,
saliva being passed back and forth and other stuff.
And people are tight.
And that's when they form up tight bonds and you get rounding.
And when the snowpack is closer to being the same temperature,
the moisture of the water vapor goes side to side.
And we lock elbows like red rover, red rover.
Send that facet over.
We're going to stomp them.
And so that's what's happening in the springtime on all aspects
as it gets warmer.
But it happens quicker on the sunny aspects
than it does on the shady aspects.
So our mental model, it's really tricky.
You're like, OK, things are trending towards rounding.
So those facets in the snowpack are
starting to actually have a good time
and become socially engaged and bond together.
But you have to be careful because you might just
have a really shallow snowpack all winter that's just rotten
sugar with a very thin eggshell freeze over the top.
And you're like, oh, it's springtime.
We're good to go.
And you're like, oh, not so fast.
Easy there, cowboy.
You might have a good enough freeze
to be low danger in the morning.
But very quickly as that bridge melts,
let's say we've got a 5-inch bridge over garbage.
As long as you're on a couple inches of ice,
and I can't give you an exact number,
but you're doing pretty well.
But this is where it gets really tricky.
As you ski lower down the mountain,
the snowpack is getting thinner.
It's probably got more facets in it.
That's what we experienced this week.
As we got lower, it went from 150, 120, 70.
And when you hit 70, it was just like garbage trap door
and crashing through.
And at night, we didn't get as much of a freeze
because it was a little bit lower.
When the clouds come in, higher elevations
are going to be colder with a better freeze.
And lower elevations are going to be warmer
with a less freeze when you have clouds or snow.
And so you could be skiing this big 3,000-plus foot line
and be like, oh, let's do an extra lap up top.
The corn's awesome.
And you're riding on two meters of snow
that's predominantly rounded and well bonded and really dense.
And then you're like, OK, it's time to go home.
It's getting too mushy.
And then you're like, oh, shit.
We have overstayed our welcome at this party.
And we are crashing the party.
And we are trap dooring to our knees, to our boot tops,
to our thighs in wet rotten facets with a tiny rickety.
Think of a rope bridge in the jungle with rotten slats
and your foot breaks through.
And you're like, this bridge can't hold shit.
And that certainly has happened to me where I'm like, oh,
I totally blew it.
We're here way too late because the upper slopes
were really deep in supportive snowpack
with a really good freeze.
And as we got lower, the temp is going up
and the snowpack is getting shallower and we are host.
Oh, man, this is a horrible feeling.
Yeah, so that's an interesting.
That makes me think of another question.
So if you're going to do the other day,
we were skiing a pitch with Frank.
And it was, I don't know, what, 900 feet, 1,000 feet?
Yeah.
So that's all kind of in one zone.
Yeah.
And that was pretty much the same pitch down to the road.
And then we parked the sled a little bit up out
of the danger zone.
Yeah.
And so in that case, we're not really,
or at least this is my understanding.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
Because that face and that zone is just not that big,
we're not going to face a huge amount of difference
from the top to the bottom.
And that's why that's OK that that slope kind of was just
the same angle and then done.
Whereas if you're going to do it bigger.
Because that slope was pretty much like this.
It was like 35 to 38 degrees the whole time.
And then you hit the valley floor.
Exactly.
And it was in that mid elevation range of near treeline,
super predictable.
The only thing that could change on that,
because the slope angle is steady,
the aspect was due south, that was steady,
is sometimes you get ridghtop wins, right?
And that may, in my near death experience with an avalanche,
that was the big change.
Was the wind just walks through there
and doesn't let it corn up.
But we had calm winds and you were flying the drone,
no problem.
It was barely a breath of wind.
But that's not, so my question was this.
If you're going to go higher up ski like a 2,000 foot descent
or something like that.
We're talking low-co and I like it.
But like, would it be better to look for something where
each maybe 800 feet or whatever is slowly mellowing out
as you go down so that even though that crust is getting
thinner, you're lowering your slope angle essentially, right?
Am I wrong about that?
Getting more solar radiation near treeline facing south
and then it gets a little flatter mid and flatter still.
So it's getting less solar radiation when you're
down near the valley floor.
Yeah, that would be optimal.
That would be optimal.
No wind.
You're kind of no wind because wind messes it all up.
And that would be sort of covering your base,
like covering your bases on two fronts sort of, right?
Yeah.
Because you're accounting for the fact
that as we get lower, that crust will get thinner probably.
Yes, as it's flattening out.
But because it's flattening out, even
if we do punch through that crust,
our chance of triggering something is much, much less likely.
Yeah.
And right now, the other variable to play with
would be aspect as well.
So let's say this is our volcano and we
can see any aspect we want.
By the way, we'll be selling all of these items at Jeff's house
at auction as a part of a kit of how you can explain to your
friends avalanche danger in the springtime.
Yeah.
Actually, Ordovox has this really cool thing.
You can check it out online where
it's like this little kind of like train set almost,
but of a mountain.
So you can visualize all these concepts and play with it.
Because holding in your head is really difficult.
And this is really fair.
If you're struggling with this, that's OK.
Because when I'm examining guides,
they're struggling with this too of what elevation band am I at,
what aspect am I on, what's the unique weather conditions
at all of those, and where are the 24 slices of the critical
blacked out danger zones that form up the problem
distribution.
So if they're worried about wet, loose, and wet slab
on the sunny side and persistent slab dry snow problems
on the shady side, that's 48 slices of the pie
to hold in your head.
And you're worried about ski quality and about safety,
about the stability.
It is really hard.
And shameless product plug, that's
where aspect avi makes it so easy to brain dump
and help support the user by crunching that data for you.
And then you can focus on the snow quality
and being like, ah, we're going to ski east in the morning.
And then we're going to ski southeast, south,
southwest, and finally west.
And heck, we may finish off with a quick lap north
to get it home.
And it might be dry powder and everything else was corn.
All right, sweet.
So maybe you were actually, wait, I have one last question.
We're talking about corn and these ice bridges and stuff.
And the other day when we were going up ski touring,
we're walking through Aspen Glades.
And I punched my pole through and it got
like stuck next to a tree.
So it made me think, where are the places when we are skiing
in the spring?
Because I just kind of want to disperse, I don't know,
get rid of this myth that spring skiing is just safer.
Dispel, thank you.
Yes, there are things about spring skiing that are safer,
but it's not just across the board safe.
So where are the places when we're talking about with this
ice bridge, where are the places we still
want to look out for on our ski tours?
Yeah, so let's think of it this way.
If this piece of ginger.
Dude, how much stuff do you have on your table right now?
I don't know.
I'm getting a bit peckish.
It's time for second breakfast, second's ease.
And if anybody knows me, they know I'm a bit ravenous.
I have to keep that tape warm, happy.
So let's say this is a tree, like an aspen or spruce.
So in your level one avalanche class,
they'll be like, hey, here's what happens.
The heat from the center of the earth
is coming up and going through the snowpack.
And when it's a shallow snowpack,
you're going to get fasted in because of that heat driving
the way the vapor moves in the snowpack between the ice
crystals.
Now, if you have a tree or a bush,
it's like a radiator in your house.
And it radiates the heat in 360 degrees.
So anytime in the wintertime when you put your pole in
or you put your probe in, it's going
to be a lot of facets around the tree,
unless you're in a super deep warm snowpack like the Sierra's
of the Cascades.
And when people say trees are anchors,
you're like, ah, no.
And all you got to do is put your hand in there.
And maybe you're in a two meter snowpack that's really warm
and it gets a lot of rain and you dig down in there
and you're like, oh, actually, it's true.
It's ice and rounds.
OK, fair enough.
But in a shallow snowpack where it's
cold, less than a meter and a half,
you're going to see way more facets around a willowbush,
sagebrush, a tree.
That's just how it is.
And it's kind of like on a math problem
where you have to show your work.
And you're like, hey, you got the right answer.
The forest is helping with stability.
However, totally wrong method.
And the reason why those trees are helping with stability
is that the tree bombs, when they fall off,
and some of these can be five pounds,
and some of them can be 20 pounds
and like jack your neck up, like really scary.
They're coming down when it gets warm or windy
and they bomb the layers of weak facets on top
and they totally break it up.
So this has often happened to me where
it's like super sketchy conditions, considerable or high
danger.
And I'm in a meadow and clearing in the forest.
And there's like a few of Charlie Brown Christmas trees
there and it's an intermediate could ride through there.
And you cannot isolate the column without it collapsing
and landing on your lap.
It's that hair trigger.
But you go 100 feet into the dense old growth forest
where only an expert can ride through because it's pretty
tight.
And those tree bombs break up the weak layer.
And keep in mind, we just got a big dump of snow on the pass
at 22 inches.
Where is most of that snow?
A lot of it is up in the canopy.
So it's taking the pressure off the snowpack.
So instead of getting a wallop of 22 inches of weight
and the snow water equivalent, call that two inches of water,
you might only be getting half of that on the snowpack.
So it stresses it much less.
And the caveat is it's got to be really dense,
old growth forest.
Lodge pole pines, they don't hold much up in the branches.
But like spruce or like cedar, that's awesome.
And they really can make this snow stability of the snowpack
much, much more in our favor, much more stable.
To the point where you dig a pit and you cannot get it to fail,
then you go out into the open clearing
where there's no tree bombs at all.
And the full weight of the storm is hitting the snowpack.
And it's the total opposite end of the spectrum.
The column is failing at the wrist.
And it's propagating across the whole thing.
And you're like, holy cow, this matches up
with the forecast of the worst conditions
possible to be expected.
Right on.
That actually makes a lot of sense.
But isn't that a little more in general of like a normal snowpack?
We're talking about a spring snowpack where we have that ice bridge.
And then so when we're dealing with that kind of snowpack,
where are the exact zones?
Say we're on a 35 degree slope, things are looking good.
If we're looking at a nice kind of double black diamond,
but it's a nice open kind of phase.
35, 40 degrees.
But what would, when we're dealing with that overall crust layer,
what would we still want to be wary of in that condition?
So these are my special X-ray vision glasses.
And so we look through the snowpack
and you can see the bushes, the stumps, the logs, the rocks,
the ledges.
Those are all radiators sending out fat heat around them
in every direction, even after they're buried or mostly buried,
just poking through just the tip.
And those facets are going to take a long time to transform.
And you may have a really good uniform slope.
And there's a few land mines kicking around the slope.
And as you melt through that bridge,
you can access those wet facets that haven't switched over
and become melt-freezed crust, which is like a mechanical process.
It's changing from a solid to a liquid and then
refreezing to a solid.
And then facets are about the vapor changing and exchanging,
where you have ice crystals exchanging vapor.
And it's pretty tacky.
But you can watch ice evaporate on an ice climb
over a long dry spell.
It's really wild.
It doesn't melt.
It just goes straight to gas.
And it's gone.
You're like, whoa, that's weird.
So keep in mind.
So would there be, would the?
If you're on the slope and it looks pretty uniform,
and it's wide open, like smooth snow, versus, oh,
I'm seeing on the edge of that uniform slope
a whole bunch of bushes and rock ledges.
Man, I'm staying away from that.
Especially if we're starting to melt through our bridge
and we're like, ooh, it's getting a little late to be here.
We've got to get out of here.
It's the bridges melting.
We need to get out of here.
You can't see everything under the surface.
But if you see a couple of sharp spins sticking up
with rocks or bushes and sagebrush,
that's where you're most likely to punch through.
Because it's not rounds underneath.
It's probably going to be a mixture of facets
and melt freeze crust.
And it's going to be weaker than the deep uniform snow
pack that's predominantly rounded
and has a smooth, strong crust on top.
So kind of like to sum that up, the later in the day,
you get the more that top ice bridge, whatever we're calling it,
is melting through, maybe the further away,
you want to stay from those potential shark fins.
It almost seems like a reverse puddle.
Reverse puddle, is that me?
I've never heard that.
Just thinking about if you have a rock or a stump
or something under it, you can kind of imagine
that there's going to be this facet almost dome around it
or near it.
That's a great way to picture it.
It's going to be the thinnest at the top.
So as that, say, this rock is two feet across,
but as we are melting through that corn, that nice crusty
layer, the further away you'd want to stay because that puddle
is kind of getting bigger.
Yeah, that's a great way of visualizing it.
And of course, what gets really tough
is when we can't use our X-ray vision glasses.
The shark fins on the top, those are the sharks that
are easy to avoid.
Can you see?
They're poking out.
But the hidden ones.
And quite often, when you see a crown of an avalanche,
the shark fins were like a couple inches below the surface,
and they were able to access that old snow sugary layer there.
You just couldn't see it.
But yeah, you're right.
And timing is absolutely critical of,
like, am I in the right place at the right time?
And sometimes the forecast is wrong.
Like when Frank and I went out, I
was expecting it to be seven inches of rock hard frozen corn.
And instead, we got this freak little snow shower
that came through with one to two inches,
and the clouds just stayed all night.
And it was like a warm blanket.
So we didn't get that kind of like 17, 15 degree temperature
at night.
It was more like high 20s.
And the new snow helped insulate,
and it just didn't freeze deep.
And here's a wacky thing.
Heat can penetrate the snowpack and cause the water
to percolate down through.
And you'll get icicles in the snowpack.
And these are called percolation columns.
You can just call them icicles.
Like, let's kill jargon.
And just to be clear, that's like literally icicles.
It's hanging off of that crusty layer
that we want to be skiing on.
Yeah, this is the crusty layer.
The icicles, it's not like the water goes through uniformly.
It's incredibly variable.
And this is that shit crazy.
This freaked me the hell out.
If you look at some great papers when they talk about wet slab
cycles and predicting them, usually it's two to three
nights with no freeze in the spring and really warm temperatures.
And what you'll see is the stream gauges
are a really accurate predictor.
And the stream gauges, when do they actually peak?
It's not during the day.
It's at night.
Because the water takes forever to percolate through.
I don't know.
It'd be really cool to put Kool-Aid through and like,
some phosphorescent to die.
And I'm sure somebody's done it.
It takes this long.
So when I was snow cat guiding up at Irwin,
we had a lot of west facing terrain
that was big and steep with these big cliff bands.
And you would go out in the morning
and you'd put your hand on the rock.
You're like, it's still hot.
Oh, that's fucked up.
And so what happens is, if this is my rock
onto my 40 degrees slope, it is soaking up so much heat
because it's on a steep slope.
And it's radiating that heat throughout the night.
And as the water goes down into the snowpack,
it will hit a crust layer that acts like a tin roof
and pushes the water down the slope
until it finds a crack in the roof and trickles down.
And it is really difficult to predict
how the water's moving through the snowpack
and for how long.
And just because it got to freezing that night,
if you've got a lot of rocks in your snowpack,
it may keep melting throughout the night.
And those trigger points become really pronounced
and the water pools in strange ways.
And if you dig into the snowpack,
you'll start to see that
where you'll start to see those icicles
being really weird places and the water pool
like in these crazy puddles.
And you're just like, whoa, this is so hyper variable.
I wanna make sure I'm on a really thick bridge,
five to seven inches.
And I'm only skiing on maybe two inches
of perfect corn on top that's melted
and I've got a lot of ice to support me
because there is a whole lot of chaos
happening under my feet that's almost unimaginable.
And I think it's really important to dispel the myth
that as a mountain guide or an avalanche forecaster,
we have a mental model of what the snowpack is doing.
But my God, that thing is a black box.
And this is like Schrodinger's cat and like physics stuff
where when you put the cat in the black box,
you never really know if it's alive or dead.
You're not sure what's going on in there.
And we can make generalizations and simplify
like these mental models of, hey,
South and Southwest is really strong corn right now,
but every slope is different.
And there's so many variables.
It's really hard to know with absolute certainty.
And when it's a huge red flag for me,
when someone is absolutely certain
and they're like, I feel good about this,
I feel very confident, that is a full stop.
Like we need to talk this out
because that is a walking human factor trap.
Because I'm sorry, like as you get older,
you just realize the world is infinitely complex
compared to what you thought it was when you was a kid,
when things were very simple, black and white,
it's either go or no go.
And now you're like, whoa, okay,
there's so much going on under the surface
that unless we're digging like 10 pits on that slope,
we really don't have much idea.
We can make these generalizations.
So when we were digging and I probably dug,
I don't know, five, six pits on a 1400 vertical climb
because I wanted to gather and-
Wait, wait, wait, let's be clear.
We didn't dig like snow pits.
We were digging out blocks.
Sorry.
Yeah, yeah.
So what I was doing was-
I don't want to confuse.
We did a whole podcast about how snow pits are not
as reliable as you think.
I don't want to confuse people.
And having your ice axe tucked in to your hall loop
right behind your back is clutch.
Like a shovel, it's really hard to stow a shovel quickly,
but guides do this all the time
and you can go shing and bring your sword out,
chop, chop, chop, and it takes you 30 seconds.
And now you're starting to see the pattern
and being like, oh, what's the slope angle
and what's the aspect
and how many inches crust am I seeing
and what's underneath it?
And how quickly am I melting through?
So if I know, okay, this slope is super consistent,
like you described, it's a thousand vertical feet
and it's all pretty much the same slope angle.
And I'm seeing very consistent seven inch crust.
I'm like, okay, but I need quite a few data points.
Right.
And then it becomes, all right,
I'm feeling more confident because the data suggests
that it is consistent.
But if you're on a slope with lots of different slope angles
and it's 3000 vertical feet and it changes aspects,
I'm like, oh man, I got to gather a lot of data
to start to have some confidence
that it's representative of what we're trusting our lives to.
Think of this, have you ever been into a building
like a skyscraper made of steel?
And that steel is just a degree or two
away from its melting point.
That's what we're doing with snow.
It's kind of fucking nuts.
Well, I've definitely never been
into a melting skyscraper, Jeff.
I don't know what kind of stuff you're doing
on your free time, man,
but you're way more extreme than me.
All right, well, that's kind of a good,
let's really quickly, you just mentioned ice axes and stuff
because there's kind of different gear
that we want for spring skiing, right?
Yeah.
Like ski crampons are a really great useful tool,
which is hilarious.
I've never used them until I met you.
So yeah, us Americans,
we got to get on this ski crampon thing.
It's sweeping the nation.
It's awesome.
Having an ice axe is clutch.
Just, you know, when we were out there,
I can tell you that you were pulling out giant blocks
in about 20 seconds with an ice axe,
where probably would have taken a minute or two to do
with a shovel just because of the way that works.
Yeah.
What are other pieces of gear that people should think about
or are really useful specifically for spring skiing?
Yeah, those are the key ones.
You hit them right there.
And ski crampons, like if you're coming out with a guide
to do a hot trip, they are mandatory gear in the Alps.
Like nobody leaves the valley floor without ski crampons.
That's just how it is.
And for some reason, Americans are really slow.
They're like the telemarkers.
And I'm a recovering telemarker.
Like there's better gear out there.
They just choose to ignore it.
And so it's safety.
Here's the three keys.
It's safety.
So you don't slide off the mountain and hit something.
And this is a big thing in the springtime.
If you're on like a 35 degree slope and steeper,
like a double black diamond, you're not gonna stop.
And I know experienced climbers who I've climbed
like LCAP with, and that's how they died,
was sliding on cornstone until they went over a cliff
or a rock.
And it's just like, hey, you gotta have this gear
and you gotta think about what's below you.
And ironically, when I got avalanched,
that's why we were in boot crampons
because my guys weren't super fluid on steep skinning
and with ski crampons.
So we're like, all right, we gotta go boot crampons.
And ironically, it caused us to punch through.
So ski crampons are pretty clutch.
They make kick turns and steep slopes
so much more comfortable, safe, and efficient.
And the key is always put the ski crampons on
before you need them.
If you're like, oh man, this is really sketchy,
you're our hose.
Do you wanna find a flat place to put it on?
And it's the same thing with boot crampons.
If you're like, man, this slope is getting really steep.
If we blow a turn here, even with ski crampons,
we are gone, it's like, okay,
we need to dig out a platform with the ax
because I've got it holstered here
and I can just go shing, shop out a flat platform,
take off the uphill ski first,
always have the downhill ski on for safety,
and then get a flat spot, put my crampons on,
skis on the back, and away we go.
And the ax and crampons oftentimes,
like the Vircan aluminum ones for spring corn
are more than enough.
And that might weigh, oh, I don't know,
less than two pounds for both of them.
They're pretty.
Your axes are freaky light.
Every time I pick one up,
I think that there's a glitch in the matrix or something.
It's like floating away.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm like, wait, this is like balloons away this much.
All right, cool, man.
Well, let's leave everyone with,
do you wanna just do a really, really quick recap?
Do you think you can do it?
Like of just one of the key takeaways?
Yeah, stretch it out, bro, stretch it out.
Key takeaways and then things that we wanna just,
things that we wanna look out for
when we're skiing in the spring.
There's our perception.
There's our perception of what's happening in the snowpack
in reality.
And so we're gonna have to gather information
to update our perception to make it match reality.
And in the springtime, it's changing fast
over the course of a week.
And even in the course of a few hours.
In fact, I'm stressing hard
because that sun is gonna cook my powder out there right now
and we're going out for a hot lunch lap.
So we need to be very adaptive to the conditions
and we need to consider our three elevation bands
and the slope angle to the sun.
Is it flat?
Is it middle or is it steep?
We also need to consider the aspect.
So it's a lot to hold in our head.
And that's where aspect, Abby, really helps you
with the snow stability part.
So you can focus on where's the best riding.
And I find even as a super expert,
I've been doing this for 20 years,
man, it is nice to offload a lot of that
so I can focus on moving my team through the terrain
as safely as possible and maximizing our rewards.
I can really focus on the good snow
and moving my team through the terrain safely
as opposed to how do I hold all those variables in my head?
And I'm sorry for the shameless product plug,
but I've just seen so many guides
that I'm examining struggle with it.
And I'm like, what aspect are we on?
And they're like, I think we're,
and I'm like, don't think, check.
You know, they're like, I don't want to hear guesswork.
You've got to be constantly checking in.
There's a great phrase when you're navigating.
It's like, if you don't know where you are all the time,
you're kind of lost.
Like you don't want to be like, man, where the heck are we?
It's time to pull out the map or the phone.
It's like, no, you really need to know what aspect
in elevation band you're on at all times
and what the rewards and what the risk is going to be
for being in that spot.
That's the big concepts and then nuts and bolts.
How thick is the bridge?
And is it over garbage or is it over concrete?
And how deeply am I melting in?
And so I will put my fingers into the snow like this
and the first knuckle, hey, that's pretty good riding.
And we haven't lost hardly any stability.
Second knuckle.
Oh, okay, that is the best riding.
It's the best riding.
Second knuckle, that's phenomenal riding.
And we're still looking pretty good on stability.
But then when you get up to the third knuckle,
the riding is going down and the stability is going down.
And it's like, we're too late, time to get out of here.
Let's go change aspect, let's change elevation.
Let's get out of here or the slope angle.
Nice.
Those are my top tips.
How to find good snow in the guide
and come home to your family. I mean, those are pretty good tips.
I got one last question for you actually.
That made me think of something.
So because we're in this, we were in a very warm cycle.
Yeah.
And then it kind of cooled off over the last couple of days.
It's still not crazy cold, but definitely cooled off.
And now we're starting to get, you know,
we got eight inches last night.
It's kind of like cleared a day
whether we're supposed to have consistent snow
going into the weekend.
If we know we have that old frozen layer,
that ice bridge there,
and then now we have, say, a foot of fresh snow
over a couple of days,
how does that change the way we travel?
Then I'm psyched because I'm like,
hey, we just got a foot of new snow
over seven inches of frozen corn.
Hey, we can check easily to see if it's bonded well
with our hands. Does it slide off a steel roof?
Ooh, that's not good.
Or is it stuck on there pretty well?
And we're skiing on seven inches of concrete.
We don't need to ski where the persistence slab problem is
on the shady aspects if we get on it right away.
And that's why I was like, oh, I'm skiing west today
with Eli at Romp Skis.
And we got to get on it right now before it gets cooked.
It's like the clock is ticking.
Well, on that note, then I'll let you go skiing, man.
I'm gonna edit this podcast.
So enjoy your time outside.
And yeah, you got any final words, man?
Yeah, the conditions are super variable in the springtime
with big temperature swings from well below freezing
to well above and intense solar
as the sun gets more intense this time of year.
So we need to adapt our behavior
to the rapidly changing conditions
and be very flexible with our mental model.
Like for instance, what we just talked about
if the storm comes in during the day
that corn snow may not have frozen.
It's really hard for cold to penetrate deeper
in the snowpack than say, oh, about eight to 10 inches.
The cold just can't really get through
unless it's cold for many, many days.
And that doesn't usually happen in the springtime.
Usually it's hot during the day, cold at night.
So it's got like this, I don't know, 10 hour window
in which for the cold to penetrate and refreeze.
So you got to constantly be checking.
And you can do that really quickly with an ice axe
or a probe and check that top foot of the snowpack of
am I over garbage or concrete?
How thick is the ice bridge?
And how many knuckles have I melted down?
One knuckle, okay.
Two knuckles, that's primo and time to wrap it up.
Three knuckles, we're too late, time to go.
My final question to you is can I borrow an ice axe
for my hut trip this weekend?
For shizzle, I'll get you set up.
Sick, all right, Jeff, we'll enjoy your time outside.
And we'll see you next week, man.
All right, stay safe out there folks
and we'll see you in the back country.
Peace.
Thank you so much for listening to All Aspects.
If you like what we're doing here,
please leave a rating and review.
It really is the best way to help others find the show.
Thanks again to our business daddy,
Aspect Abby for making this show possible.
To learn more about how Aspect Abby
is making avalanche safety simple,
go to aspectabby.com.
If you wanna use this powerful new tool
on your next back country adventure,
simply download the app from the app store
and enjoy 30 days free on them.
Lastly, special thanks to Ice Lab
for helping us produce this show.
You guys rock and we couldn't do without you.
Thanks again for listening
and we'll see you in the back country.