Trail Closed

A really bad ending:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/yosemite-hiker-killed-after-ignoring-closed-trail-signs/ar-BBU4khr

Trails are usually closed for good reasons...

2019 Darwin Award winner.

I won't even walk under a small icicle. We get some big ones on our second story rain gutters (Note to others: Those never-clog rain gutters they sell so you don't have to clean leaves out of them work good for leaves, but they create massive and dangerous icicles - the gutters are expensive and I don't recommend them if you live in a place like Colorado).

We hold family competitions out in the yard - we use slingshots loaded with Jawbreaker candies to see who can take out the most 2nd story icicles the fastest. It's a fun way to get rid of those dangerous things!

I definitely live in Icicle Country and have had the clog-free rain gutters for about ten years, with no unusual icicle formation.

Are your gutters the kind where there is a "roof" over the gutter, that goes past the outer edge of the gutter, then curves back into the gutter? The theory being the water runs down over the top of this little roof, then makes the curve around the outside with surface tension holding the water onto it long enough so that it reverses course (on the underside) and falls into the gutter.

This kind:

https://www.leafguard.com/images/gutter%20guard.png

That's the way ours are. What happens is that snow builds up on the roof (this time I'm talking about the main roof of the house). As the sun shines and the day warms the snow melts, but it re-freezes to the "roof" on top of the gutter (this "roof" is thin sheet metal and transfers the cold air temperature easily). This causes the outer edge of the little "roof" to grow and grow, extending itself farther out past the gutter, so water flows over that extension, re-freezes, and you have icicles. And if that's not bad enough, during the daytime the icicles melt a little and drip. In our case, in the front yard they drip onto our driveway, in our backyard they drip onto our deck. And that drippy water re-freezes again and you end up with a skating rink underneath the icicles.

Here is a picture of our icicles (you can't really tell it in this picture, but they grow to about 5 or 6 feet long and are wide and heavy at the top - that's a dangerous thing!)

No, that’s not the ones I have. I’m not sure the company that made mine still exists, but instead of a hood over the gutter it uses a very fine mesh screen, and I haven’t had to do anything with it since we got it installed.

I used to live near Donner Pass. They get heavy snow.

10 feet in one recent storm.

The joke was that if you live in snow country, you have heat tape installed to stop the ice from forming on the edge of the roof, but where we lived, you used a baseball bat to knock the ice off the heat tape.