Aspect: All

Elevation: Near and Above Treeline

Bottom Line: A slow moving low hovers over the area and continues to drop wet snow. This active weather pattern that started 3/11 has brought ~ 1.5″ of water. The new snow is a sandwich of moist snow top and bottom, with a thin layer of drier snow in the middle from 3/14 when temps dropped significantly (low 7F @ ~4000′). This sandwich is sitting on a variety of smooth and rough surfaces from a wind event prior. Causing possible natural and likely human triggered avalanches. Careful snowpack evaluation and conservative decision making is essential.

Travel Advice:

• Use cautious route finding.
• Pay attention to red flags: shooting cracks and collapse.
• Use small and safe test slopes for feedback.
• Keep wide margins on slopes < 30 degree slope angle and complex terrain.
• Ask yourself.  If this snow moves, where is it going to stuff me.  Terrain trap and what kind?
• Be patient.  This problem will heal in time.

Additional Consideration:

• We believe deeper persistent layers are currently dormant. However, you could still trigger a persistent slab in thin or shallow snow even if we haven’t had recent feedback or avalanche activity.
• With the beginning of March comes a higher sun angle than we have seen for the last couple months. Surface warming will begin to be prevalent on solar days, especially around exposed rocks and creating thin and/or weak spots where you could trigger these deeper layers.
• A variety of wind loading patterns throughout the season have created sizeable cornices on all aspects near mountain tops and ridgelines. Beware that cornices can break much further back than expect, can trigger deeper persistent weak layers and are sensitive to warming, temperature changes and direct sunlight.
• Remember that persistent slabs are unpredictable and that tests and observations can be unreliable. A probe can be very helpful to determine snow depth and presence of deeper buried weak layers by noting resistance as the probe moves through the snow.
• Continue to utilize safe travel protocol, wide margins of safety, and collect more information when it comes to entering committing terrain.

Aspect: All

Elevation: Tree Line and above

Bottom Line:  Keep in mind that with new snowfall, any existing wind slabs from the last few days may be difficult to near impossible to identify. A switching pattern of south and north winds has this problem on all aspects. A variety of light to strong winds associated with new moderate amounts of snow could have reactive wind slabs 1-4′ deep. These winds also could be sitting on a variety of smooth and rough surfaces. Moderate to strong south winds today will keep this problem reactive. Naturally triggered avalanches are possible and human triggered avalanches are likely. Careful snowpack evaluation and conservative decision making is essential.

Travel Advice:

• Look for blowing or drifting snow or rapid loading.
• Avoid slopes with textured surfaces, suspect loading, or pockets of wind slab.
• Identify and avoid shallow areas including trigger points around rocks, cliffs, and trees.
• Understand wind slabs can break in shallow spots and propagate deeper.
• Look, listen and feel for shooting cracks, collapses and hollow sounds.
• Avoid terrain trap areas such as cliffs and gullies, and areas where it is hard to escape off to the side.