Resources
Evidence-based, data-driven articles for backcountry skiers who want to understand what is actually happening under the surface — snowpack science, avalanche literacy, and the daily decisions that keep you safe.
Weak layers, the 10°C/m faceting threshold, the EAWS 1–5 scale and snowpack tests — a data-driven framework for reading backcountry snow conditions before you ski.
On the same day, a shady north couloir and a sun-baked south face can be worlds apart. Here is how the two biggest levers in the mountains — aspect and elevation — reshape the snowpack hour by hour, and how the bulletin’s rose encodes it all.
A buried skier's survival collapses from ~91% to ~31% in the minutes between burial and rescue. This is the science of that curve — and why the person standing next to you, not a helicopter, is the one who has to save you.
Moving time is the floor, not the forecast. Learn the Munter formula, why vertical dominates, how to build a realistic buffer, and how to back-plan a turnaround time before you leave the car.
The same water can fall as 14 cm of wet cement or 36 cm of cold smoke. Understanding snow-to-liquid ratio is the difference between a forecast and a powder day — and between a safe load and a dangerous one.
Perfect corn isn't decided by the sunny forecast — it's decided by the night before. Here's the melt-freeze physics, the pole test for the corn window, and how to time your descent around the compass.
The large majority of skier-triggered slab avalanches happen on slopes between 30 and 45 degrees, clustering near 38°. Here is why nature picks that window — and how to use slope angle as your first and sharpest terrain filter.
Every modern avalanche bulletin is built on a single framework: the avalanche problem. Learn the five standard problems used by EAWS and North America — where each forms, its telltale field signs, how it behaves, and how to manage it. The same danger level means a totally different day depending on which problem is active.