When to Turn Around and When Not to Go at All
Okay. This is the last real decision-making lesson before we just go do it, so I want to be straight with you about the two different calls you're making here. Turning around mid-trip is one skill. Deciding not to leave the driveway is a different one, and honestly it's the one people skip because it feels like giving up before you even tried.
It's not giving up. It's the same muscle.
The decision you make before you leave
Here's the thing. Most bad snowshoe days were decidable from the kitchen table. You don't need to be on the trail to know it's a bad idea.
Don't go if:
- The forecast shows temps climbing fast through the morning and you can't start early. We talked about this in the warm-up/refreeze lesson. If you're not out the door by first light and the afternoon's supposed to warm up, you're planning a slush walk, not a snowshoe.
- Wind advisory or a system moving in faster than expected. Foothill weather changes on you quick. I check three times a day and I'm not kidding about that.
- You, or whoever you're bringing, are already tired, sick, or dressed wrong before you've taken a step. If you're miserable in the parking lot you'll be worse a mile in.
- The trail report or recent tracks show stuff past groomed, packed snow into steeper or unfamiliar terrain. That's not this class. If someone's telling you "just push past the marked loop, it opens up," that's avalanche terrain territory and I'm not your guy for that. Take a real avy course if that's the direction you want to go. I stick to low-angle, groomed foothill trails on purpose and I'd rather tell you that straight than pretend I know more than I do.
None of this requires being on site to figure out. It's a five-minute call at home, and it's the cheapest turnaround you'll ever make because it costs you nothing but a Saturday morning you spend doing something else instead.
The decision you make on the trail
This is different. You're already out, you're already invested, and that's exactly when people talk themselves into bad choices. "We're already this far" has ended more good afternoons than bad weather has.
Turn around when:
- You hit your marked turnaround point. We covered this. You set it before you left, you honor it when you get there, full stop. Doesn't matter how good you feel.
- Snow conditions change under you and you weren't expecting it. Suddenly postholing where you weren't before, or crust giving way, means the day is different than the day you planned for.
- Someone in your group is cold in a way that isn't fixing itself with a layer change. Cold that's getting worse, not better, is not a "push through it" situation.
- Light's going and you don't have a headlamp. Elevation and canyon shadows eat daylight faster than you think up here. If you're guessing about how much light's left, you've already stayed too long.
- You lose the trail markers, even for a minute, in flurries or flat light. I've told you about the whiteout thing. Stop, don't guess, backtrack to your last known point.
The hard part isn't recognizing these. It's actually turning around when your brain is telling you the view's probably just around the next bend. It's almost never worth it. The bend after that looks the same as this one.
An easy home practice for this
Before your next trip, write your turnaround call and your on-trail turnaround point on the same sticky note, phone note, whatever. Do it the night before, when you're not standing at a trailhead with adrenaline and ambition talking you out of good sense. Read it again in the morning before you decide whether to go at all.
That's it. That's the whole system. It's not fancy, it just works because you did the thinking when you were calm.
Why I still do this even on the good days
I want to tell you about a morning that had nothing wrong with it, because that matters too. Faith came out with me a while back, no kid, just the two of us on a clear, cold morning. Perfect conditions, no calls to make, nothing to turn around from. We didn't talk much for two hours. Just walked.
That's the payoff on the other side of all this caution. You do the boring decision-making work, the checking, the turnaround points, the not-going-when-you-shouldn't, so that on the days everything lines up, you get two hours like that. Best morning I've had all winter, and it beat a nice dinner out by a mile. I still bring it up to Faith.
You're not doing all this discipline to survive snowshoeing. You're doing it so the good mornings actually happen, and happen more than once.
Before next time: pick a trip you're actually planning to take this winter and write down, right now, one weather condition that would make you cancel it before you leave the house.