Many states have road condition cameras linked to their Department of Transportation pages. Look up the ones closest to your intended destination. Think about the elevation and aspect. If your early season route is at 10,000’ on a north face, then try to find views that are similar. You can get an idea of snow levels and conditions from the photos that can be extremely helpful, especially in early and late season. You can also find cameras at weather monitoring stations, air quality cameras, or other public feeds tied to the government or scientific research. Internet search engines can be amazingly helpful for finding these, but you might need to search a bit. Keep digging, as they might not appear on the first page of a search.

Choose a weather app or website (or multiple) and follow it regularly throughout the year. See what patterns you find for the areas you want to search in. If it gives a temperature range before you head up, check to see how accurate it is while out there. If it calls for a 60% chance of rain, does that mean spotty thunderstorms or all-day rain? Does 6” to 9” of snow in the forecast materialize? Knowing the limitations of the forecast you rely on can give you a good idea of what to expect.

The last thing you want is to have your camp destroyed by an avalanche, especially if you are still in the tent. Avoid setting up in or below terrain traps, like gullies, narrow couloirs, or steep, open slopes. Avalanches will funnel into gullies, and the debris can be significantly deeper than on slopes. Watch out for avalanche paths, which are slopes devoid of trees or vegetation, or slopes or sections of forest where all the trees have been flattened from previous avalanches. If you are camping on a glacier, probe for crevasses before setting up your tent. The dangers of winter camping might not be immediately obvious, especially if setting up camp at night. Make sure to use a topo map to help identify objective dangers if setting up at night, and use caution and sound decision-making to select your campsite. See the avalanche safety article for more info on avalanche info in your area.

If you are camping near a cliff face, look around in the snow near your campsite. Is the snow littered with rocks on the surface? If so, look for another spot. In the winter, the rockfall hazard is drastically increased. Water freezes in cracks, or under boulders and rocks and expands. The expansion can break rocks loose, and once it warms, the bond between the ice and rock will weaken and gravity will send this debris raining down.

You might find Instagram to be more conducive to memes and videos of cats, but it can also be a beneficial tool for checking conditions. Follow the local ice stars, the ones who are continually getting after it and putting up new routes. You can also follow skimo (ski mountaineering) folks, as they are constantly in the backcountry and can have valuable insight on ice, snow, and avalanche conditions. Search out or try to create a #hashtag for local ice conditions: #beehiveice and #hyaliteprovides for Utah and Montana ice, respectively, will pull up posts from anyone who tags their Instagram posts. This allows you to see what’s happening in their area firsthand.

Map out your approach and descent as well as possible beforehand. If using GPS-based maps, flag the crucial junctions on approaches or descents, so you know when to turn even in the dark or whiteout blizzard conditions. Avenza›, Gaia›, inReach›, and others allow you to download the maps you need and mark them up before you go. Be aware of the limitations, though. Batteries are quickly exhausted in the cold, and you could be left mapless. Ensure you have a full battery, keep your phone on the inside of your jacket in a warm place, and consider bringing an external battery and charging cable just in case. As a backup, always bring a printed map, preferably one that is marked with the same notations as your digital one. Just like climbing, redundancy can make the difference between life or death.

You can also use maps to form “educated guesses” as to where to look for new ice in the first place. Google Earth can reveal narrow gullies or couloirs. You can sometimes find images of waterfalls or ice features already on Google Maps and Google Earth. Look for water sources flowing over cliffs. Some topo maps indicate springs, intermittent streams, etc. that can feed ice climbs. Look at the north faces of mountains, as they typically receive the least amount of sun, so will be the coldest and most sheltered places for ice to hide out. Elevation will all be relative to the region you are in. In the Western U.S., early season ice typically starts in October above 10,000’, while the East and Midwest can have early season ice starting around 1,000’ in elevation.

Guidebooks throughout the country are very different in how they present information and how they prepare you for what’s to come. Use it as a resource, but don’t rely on it entirely. Rather than carry the entire book, Smith (who wrote the guidebooks on Utah ice herself) takes photos of the maps, approach beta, and route descriptions with her phone.