re: #67 austin_blue

Just to be clear, you are talking cement on powder, yes? And once it cuts loose, it glides over the powder, picks up speed, and slams into anything downhill with tremendous force and mass?

Eh, it’s a little more complex than that. That faceted layer at the surface (the bare ground) I was referring to was snow that fell in October and November, and its texture is very crystally, like sugar. And now there’s five to ten feet of snow from about a dozen different storm cycles and days of sunshine on top of that. The moisture content of the snow we’ve gotten in this last storm cycle (which was high, you refer to it as ‘cement’ I beg to differ, I would call it schlarvy vicousness) certainly doesn’t help, and we’ve gotten A LOT of it up high. That’s too much weight for the snowpack that we have. Every path that can slide slid in most places, naturally.

Oh, and the valley floors? It’s been raining.