Example #1 of why you don’t want to get caught in an avalanche:

The ridges got three to five feet of heavy wet snow from our recent storms, with rain on top of that to make it even more heavy. As a result, the avalanche danger was extreme, and large areas of Squaw slid.

The entire lower part of East Face and connecting ridge slid, and here’s part of the flow coming out of East Face Gully.

You can see why all the avalanche deaths in the area in the last few years have been from blunt force trauma and not suffocation.

Example #2 of why you don’t want to get caught in an avalanche:

More avalanche rubble below Men’s Downhill in Siberia Bowl.

Example #3 of why you don’t want to get caught in an avalanche:

A large slide path on Siberia from an avalanche in North Bowl. The slide ran all the way across the run and up and over a knob to the left.

This was our first day of real skiing on real snow this season at Squaw. Nice skiing up top, but the amount of slide rubble was amazing.

We did find nice spring conditions with big soft bumps on Tower 16. It had some slide rubble as well, visible in the upper left.

It was very windy on the ridges, with nice wind buff at the top of Granite Chief.

Overall a very nice day, although it’s sad to see so much of Squaw rendered unskiable due to avalanches.