No matter what kind of skiing you prefer to do, every skier is concerned with the weather. The weather can make a good day great, or make a great day turn
dangerous in a matter of minutes. Knowing what to expect so you can time your skiing right is incredibly important. Fortunately for us, there are people like Joel Gratz who does a skiing specific weather forecast on his Colorado Powder Forecast website (www.coloradopowderforecast.com). Continue Reading

Regardless of how much you ski in the backcountry, it is important for you to understand at least a little bit about the dynamics of temperature and snowpack stability.  In the previous articles you learned a few of the very basic snow pit tests, so now it is time to start talking a little bit of “snow science” to bring things together. This will lead to your ability to understand weather and PREDICTING when and where to see avalanches. Continue Reading

Surface Hoar is the bane of many avalanche forecasters.  It is responsible for more deaths than any other mechanism of avalanche failure.  Thus, it is important that we understand it so we can try to PREDICT and AVOID it. Continue Reading

Interview with Dean Cummings: How to prepare for heli skiing. Continue Reading

Before I get into the Rutsch Block test, let me first tell you that I rarely use them. The test is very time consuming and personally I feel like I can get more information by doing several smaller pits in the same amount of time. One of the biggest benefits for doing a Rutsch Block test though is that you get a very good idea (visual) of what a skiers weight will do to the snowpack. Continue Reading

The Compression Test discussed in the previous article is one of the more quantitative tests in the snow pit “bag ‘o tricks.”  The Shovel Shear Test (Shear Test or Shovel Shear for short) is more of a qualitative test, but still very valuable. Continue Reading

Now that you know where and how to dig a snow pit, it is time to talk about some of the tests we can do with them. Continue Reading

By Joel Bettner

Before I start talking about them let me first say that snow pits are certainly not a be-all-end-all evaluation technique. Often the info gathered from a pit can be helpful in your decision making and also when communicating things to other people (because the information is reported in a standardized manner leaving less room for subjectivity). But more often than not we gather “big picture” data from snow pits since conditions can change significantly from one location to another just 10 feet away. Snow pit tests give us an IDEA of what is happening in the snow pack. Continue Reading