Another Serving of Salmon Please

<p>Every morning before heading out into the field we discuss and choose a strategic mindset. Yesterday we had chosen “initial assessment”, due to being in a new area. After looking at and testing the snow we were comfortable “stepping out” into more challenging terrain. This morning we decided on “stepping back” due to recent avalanches close to the area we planned on riding. We knew we had to go into this new area with caution and cool down the stoke from the previous day. We went to Salmon Lake riding area, and we were blown away by the awesome terrain it had available. We saw lots of recent avalanche activity and yet our snowpack tests didn’t produce and scary results. The sun was shining, and we were tempted to start taking bites of bigger pieces of terrain. We stopped and talked about our findings in the snowpack tests, the obvious recent avalanches and our strategic mindset. Having “stepping back” as our mindset for the day made us stop and seriously weigh all the factors of why we thought it was ok to “step out”. It didn’t add up. The sunny day, the cool terrain, and the lack of scary results in snowpack tests weren’t enough for us to ignore the obvious recent avalanche activity. We stayed conservative with our terrain choices and had a good time riding!</p>

Terrain Ridden

Dense trees, Mellow slopes.

Terrain Avoided

Alpine slopes, Convex slopes, Open trees, Steep slopes, Sunny slopes.

Avalanche Conditions

Slab avalanches today or yesterday.

Rapid temperature rise to near zero degrees or wet surface snow.

Snow Conditions

Powder.

Weather Conditions

Sunny, Warm.