The initial slope breaks away to climber's left, leading to many a dropped water bottle and not a few unclipped sleds to zip down the fall line and launch out towards the Lower Peters Glacier thousands of feet below.
At the top of Squirrel Hill, before the upcoming Polo Field, be cautious for crevasses. This is where you'll have your first view of the many couloirs that lace the Buttress towering up to your left. If you can see them, assess if or how much they are sloughing before heading up the Polo Field.
Conditions on Windy Corner can vary from blue ice to a “sidewalk in the sky." Be on guard here as your risks shift from crevasse fall to team fall.
Above Windy Corner, as you approach 14,000' Camp, you'll encounter some more big crevasses, so it makes sense to shift back to a crevasse fall mindset if they are not wide open.
We're firm believers in using locking carabiners to attach your sled to your pack. Rumor has it that some years ago a guide who did not use a locker had a sled flip over and over, twisting the attachment rope until the non-locker clipping it to the pack opened and the sled took the express route down, down, down.
Occasionally, usually during rough weather, teams will camp or cache their supplies on the Polo Field. When the weather is rough, it's hard to tell how far across the trail avalanches might run. More than one cache has been lost by getting buried by a big slough.
Timing. The West Buttress has shed a lot of rocks across the trail over the years. There was a massive rockfall accident a while back with a terrible outcome. The rockfall event was not too long after the sun passed overhead, when the slopes above were starting to freeze. Water expands 9% when it freezes, so that could have precipitated the rocks falling.
Snowfall. If it's dumping snow down below, watch out for slides off the Buttress across the Polo Field. Be very suspicious about descending Motorcycle Hill if snow and wind have loaded the slopes.