(There are six beacon training parks in Utah where people can go and practice for free. They are located in the western Uintas, Snowbasin, Snowbird, Solitude, The Canyons and in the Manti-LaSal Mountains at the top of Fairview Canyon.)

It doesn't take a giant avalanche to kill us. Just a couple of feet of snow can trap a person.

When search and rescue personnel are called in, it's usually because the person buried doesn't have rescue gear. But it takes us a long time to get to a site. Search and rescue dogs get a lot of coverage, but usually it's after the fact. It takes awhile to get rescue dogs to the scene, much longer than 15 minutes.

And who triggers avalanches? We do.

When people go into the backcountry, they need to know what to look for and avoid avalanche areas.

Typical avalanche terrain is steep and has no trees.

With slopes less than 30, there is no gravitational tug on the snowpack. Slopes steeper than 50 degrees are constantly avalanching. And where do we usually play? On slopes between 35 and 45 degrees, and that's where slab avalanches occur, and it is slab avalanches that kill us.

And remember, if you can ride or slide through the trees, avalanches can go through the trees and those trees become 50 and 60 foot baseball bats as you pinball down the mountain.

One of the biggest clues to avalanche danger is an avalanche. If you see an avalanche on the same kind of slope, with the same angle, same elevation and facing the same direction, then you know there's a problem.

And you should start thinking that this isn't where I want to hang out and maybe this isn't the day to go snowmobiling.

And remember, avalanches are a lot like people. They don't like drastic changes and actually get cranky when they go through rapid changes, such as temperature and snow load.

And an avalanche doesn't know if you're local or a hot rider or that it's the best powder day of the year. And, unfortunately, avalanches don't know that we've got to get home at the end of the day.