I wanted to ask the forum when is "too much" deadfall in an area for you to hang from otherwise healthy looking trees? Do you ever see an area that just looks like SOMETHING is wrong and think looking for widowmakers in your immediate vicinity isn't enough?

I went on a backpacking trip this weekend in the Sawtooths. We went thru a burn area on the way in and after that, never really found our way out of areas with a large amount of deadfall that, to me, looked to be fire damage. Research after the fact shows that the burn area was small and we had exited it; however, the deadfall was shockingly abundant to the point that I ended up erring on the side of caution with being unfamiliar with how to judge lodgepole pine health and going to ground in a clearing so as to not pull over a tree on myself.

I didn't think to take any pictures of the truly heavy deadfall near the lake we were trying to camp next to, but this picture was from one of the better areas



This picture from some post trip reading is more indicative of the area I deemed too much deadfall.