Hey everybody, welcome back to the Blister podcast on the Blister Podcast on the Blister Podcast Network.

I'm Jonathan Ellsworth, and you can check out everything we're doing and reviewing over at blisterreview.com.

Well, as I think pretty much every skier knows, a whole lot of snow is currently falling on the western side of North America.

And while this is absolutely cause for celebration, this is also a time for any of us who are thinking about getting into the backcountry to exercise

a whole lot of good sense and wisdom.

And so given this powerful storm system rolling through, I thought it would be a very good

time to get Zach Guy back on the Blister podcast. We had Zach on on February 1st earlier this

year and it was a fantastic episode and actually, and I'm really happy to say this, it was one of our

most listened to Blister podcast episodes of all time. And that is good news because Zach was

dropping all sorts of fantastic insights and just extremely important stuff for, again,

all of us to know if we are headed into the backcountry. Zach is the lead forecaster for the Crested Butte Avalanche Center.

He has a lot of experience in snow science and in forecasting.

And I would highly encourage you to go back and listen to episode 161.

That was the previous episode that I did with Zach, and we talk a whole lot more about

his own background in that conversation. Furthermore, in the show notes to this episode,

we're going to include links to a number of conversations related to backcountry travel

and avie forecasting and decision making

in the backcountry. And right now, and I'm recording this conversation on Sunday,

December 26th, that 7 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. We saw that a lot of ski areas had to shut

down today due to extremely heavy winds.

So if you couldn't ride chair lifts today and if it's not quite the right time to be getting

into the backcountry, maybe this is a really good time to listen to some extremely experienced

...