Sangre de Cristo

You can trigger an avalanche where snow from the past few weeks combined with primarily westerly wind to create cohesive slabs of snow on top of weak, cohesionless snow. Identify and avoid wind-loaded terrain to reduce your chances of triggering an avalanche. You can identify wind-loaded slopes by their smooth, rounded, often wave-like snow surface appearance and the hollow, hard feeling if you are traveling on them. If you notice cracking and collapsing in the snow as you travel consider moving to a different slope or staying on slopes less than about 30 degrees steep without steep slopes above you.