Keeping track of the season’s conditions can be an elaborate process filled with empirical data and coded spreadsheets. Or, you can follow your local forecast and write shorthand summaries. Either way, Tracking the Season’s Conditions is the way to build pattern recognition skills to connect weather events and patterns to safe travel conditions. Tracking from afar is necessary if you live in a city away from the mountains, but even if you live in the mountains, a routine of writing things down will help match patterns you observe in the snow to weather events and the passage of time.

As with any habit, the best practice is the one you will actually use. Tracking the season’s conditions needs to be easy and repeatable. It needs to be a process that follows critical factors such as avalanche problems, hazard rating, and notable weather throughout every day of the season. If you pair this with a quick weather check in the morning, then you will surely be able to hold yourself accountable to a repeatable process day in and day out.