The purpose of this study is to examine the unsaturated shallow slope failures triggered by infiltration from the perspective of static equilibrium. This study takes account of negative pore water pressure and analyzes how pore water pressure of the wetting front affects the stability of the strata. The failure in strata would be divided into two types: one is above the wetting front another is below the wetting front so as to understand the effect of infiltration on strata stability, and correspondingly to understand the effect on the initiation of possible slope shallow failure events. To consider an unsaturated slope without groundwater, compared with the previous studies, the result reveals that the strata stability prior to rainfall is higher than those model without considering negative pore water pressure. In those cases where there is infiltrating without runoff depth, although the wetting front affects the negative pore water pressure near the surface of strata, it has little effect on the original strata stability. The main cause affecting the strata stability is the degree of slope; with the increasing of the degree of slope, the original strata will turn to be instable. Conversely, under the situations with runoff depths, strata will be destroyed above the wetting front. The depth of destruction is directly proportional to the length of the downward wetting front, which belongs to shallow failure. There fore, the infiltration process accompanied with the runoff depth is a crucial factor triggering an unsaturated soil shallow failure.