Safe tour this weekend?

I completely agree with the comments about Alta Vista and Edith Creek. Alta Vista certainly has slopes steep enough to avalanche ( and slopes large enough to ensure the avalanche would bury you ). Not to mention the trees. This type of terrain is classic middle ground - maybe not explicitly dangerous relative to other terrain in the area - so it might tend to foster a false sense of security.

Edith Creek basin is classic avalanche terrain and the slopes there are large, steep, and completely connected. Any slope release there could be very large. Previous poster rightly mentions a terrain trap ( a gully ) where a snowshoer perished last December. My opinion: Edith Creek basin is not terrain I would ski in these conditions; there is enough snow there to bury you many times over. Sure there are safer bits ... but you still have to ski out of the basin ... so I guess it really depends on your taste for exposure. Since this thread requests "safe" tours ... I'd go ahead and cross Edith Creek and Alta Vista off the list.

On the other hand. I believe much of Paradise is safe for touring provided the typical retinue of avalanche safety measured are observed. I've already shared this here, but my brothers and I were touring at Paradise on the 24th and the snow was very unstable. We managed to have a completely safe, fun day... but driving down the road from Paradise our car was hit by a fairly large, loose-snow avalanche. Enough snow to bury the road ... so I think at this point, I would have to consider the risk of driving between Longmire and Paradise.

Well there is still some snow in the low lands, and with the low snow level tonight into tomorrow maybe you could find some turns in shallow relatively safe snow close to the city. On the other hand if you somehow die in a tree well on Tiger Mountain I'd feel pretty low, so forget I mentioned it.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

...Edith Creek basin is not terrain I would ski in these conditions; there is enough snow there to bury you many times over. Sure there are safer bits ... but you still have to ski out of the basin ... 

In the 70's, there was a several hundred yard long four-foot crown fracture near the crest of Alta Vista.  The debris filled half the basin.  Even though deposition stopped on the flat just above Myrtle Falls, it triggered a sympathetic release from the modest hillside just to the south (the normal entry route near the paved summer trail), that ran across the Valley Road.  This same cycle also included a slab release from the very innocent looking small slope on the south side of Alta Vista facing the old VC.  This deposited several feet deep on the normal route to Glacier Vista and Pan Pt.  Telemetry shows over three feet in the past two days, with wind gusts approaching 50.  I'm sticking to XC this weekend...even in the unlikely event the road opens.

I'd second Randy's suggestion of Hex, assuming you have some sense of what avy terrain looks like and you follow his suggestions on passing on the last bit to the summit and the tempting clearcuts and glades off the sides of the ridge. Besides having a relatively safe route, I see from Mission Ridge's telemetry that they've likely not gotten nearly as much new snow over around Hex (Mission Ridge seems like as close a proxy for Hex as I've found, but of course Hex is going to be different).

But as with some other potentially OK choices, even the flats at Gold Creek (where you can push out into some exposed areas if you go far enough, as Bird Dog noted), the safe areas are near potentially hazardous areas, and knowing the difference would seem quite important...

Ah yes yodelin...whilst touring there on a considerable avy forecast day (since it is fairly safe), I came to a stop above a very minor slope, just above where the logging road comes out. And there 20 feet in front of me, a crack slowing opened (albeit on a convex slope) and lo, a torrent of propagation did occur, wreaking fury on the flat 50 feet below and leaving a nice 18 inch crown. Luckily the avy course that had been practicing there in the flat that morning had already left.