The Bottom Line: We are starting our season with an Assessment mindset. So far this autumn has been marked by extremes — both warm and cold, snowy and rainy.  This is a much different set up than we had last season at this time. Overall you can find lots of variability due to multiple strong wind events (most recently from the SE, increasing today from the NW), with thin areas having a weak facetted snowpack and thicker areas containing midpack rain crusts. The main threat for now is increasingly stiff wind slabs due to NW winds picking up Saturday into Sunday. Any freshly wind loaded areas may harbor wind slabs 1-2ft thick which could be triggered by a human.

Wind loaded slopes and cross-loaded gullies should be avoided or carefully managed. Minimize your exposure to these slopes, and always travel one-at-a-time through any suspect areas. Rocks will be a major safety hazard as well, so take it slow and easy, and keep your avalanche eyeballs on, especially in wind loaded areas and convexities!

Additional Considerations:

The cold snap in early November created basal facets in thin areas above 1000ft. These facets haven’t been active yet, but the possibility still exists that an avalanche could fail at the ground in thin areas with a new slab on top. This concern may grow into a deep slab problem over time if these facets weaken into depth hoar.

To add to our early season uncertainties, there was a significant glide avalanche cycle Nov 16-18 during a strong warming event at upper elevations. These slides mainly occurred in areas near treeline on NE aspects, where the snowpack is fat and sitting on steep grassy slopes underneath. There are still many glide cracks that have not yet failed into full avalanches. Despite the cooling weather, these cracks still need to be avoided as they may still fail at any time. Keep an eye above you and stay out from underneath these cracks.