Selkirk Mountains

While the chance to impact deeper weak snow layers diminishes with time, the same consequence of triggering a larger avalanche remains and should be factored into your decision making. Wind-drifted slopes where either surface hoar or a faceted crust are buried under a two foot thick slab are the most problematic. The best course of action is to choose wind-sheltered slopes less than about 35 degrees not directly below steeper overhead hazards and avalanche paths for safer travel options.

Just when we think we are going to catch a break from the rain, it makes its un-welcoming return. All we had hoped for is to enter the extended dry period with soft surface conditions but we may end up with a thin egg shell over the landscape. Before the nicer weather arrives on Tuesday (supposedly) weather in the mountains on Monday could be a mixed bag affair. How fast the warm air arrives will dictate the flavor of precipitation and what elevations see liquid versus frozen. Precipitation amounts are so light that we do not envision today’s weather driving much change in overall conditions or causing new wet hazards to emerge.

Avalanche conditions will continue to ease with each passing day. This is influenced by the lack of meaningful new snow load and less drifting and which is allowing the snowpack to find some equilibrium. However, the process of finding balance is happening faster closer to the surface than deeper within. While conditions seem quiet from our above the surface perspective, potentially deadly concerns lie quiet and only wait for a tickle in the right or wrong spot - depending on how you look at it.

Not to sound totally doom and gloom, but overall conditions are heading in the right direction and upper snowpack layers are slowly becoming more well-bonded. The transition in weak snow layers from reactive to stubborn to unreactive doesn’t happen overnight and undoubtedly takes more time than we expect. Slab strengthening will contribute to diminishing signs of unstable snow that can push us toward a false-stable assessment about conditions. Meaning, the places where we can impact weak snow below become more isolated in a broader sense, though the threat is not fully eliminated. 

When this occurs, we need to incorporate other tools in the bag of assessment. If our snowpack evaluations highlight failure potential in buried weak layers less than about 3 feet deep, we need to factor the consequences of an avalanche in our terrain selections - choose planar slopes with clean runouts versus ones with cliffs, trees, or terrain traps below. As more days pass without a major change in the weather, conditions may evolve to where multiple riders or machines can travel on a slope before someone finds one of the few trigger spots. This shift suggests factoring where you travel in the terrain, how many people are on the slope at once, and identifying areas of safety with wide margins.

Buried surface hoar is one of those persistent grains that should be given the respect that is due. These feathers can have very similar distributions across similar types of slopes but can also vary enough spatially between neighboring drainages and in micro-areas of a range to behave differently. They will also sit patiently for longer periods of time to where we often forget about them to only rear their ugly heads when our hackles have laid down.