Snowcover is dwindling fast in the Abajo Mountains but it still remains possible to trigger a dangerous avalanche as two local snowboarders found out yesterday. Most people would not suspect this given the overall lack of snow and even bare ground on adjacent slopes. The problem is that the existing snowpack has very poor structure. This means that layers of weak, faceted snow exist underneath a dense, hard slab. The areas where you can actually find this are few and far between, but wherever snowcover exists on steep, northerly aspects, human triggered avalanches remain possible.