Snoqualmie Pass

You should find generally nice weather and minimal avalanche hazard at Snoqualmie Pass on Monday. Remember that a low rating doesn’t mean that hazard is non-existent. You could still encounter small avalanches in isolated areas or more extreme terrain. 

Sunday was a beautiful and very busy day in the mountains of Snoqualmie Pass. Snow enthusiasts were out on all forms of travel, crawling around in every nook and cranny of the mountains enjoying the sunshine, cold temperatures, and predominantly stable snowpack conditions.

Public and professional observations from the day are basically non-existent despite the hoards of folks out in the hills. Luckily, NWAC forecasters headed to the Alpental Valley and were able to take a look around for a few hours in the morning. On sun-exposed slopes, the story remains the refrozen and crusty snow near the surface from Friday’s warmup. A dusting of snow now sits upon this breakable crust in all areas observed. On shaded slopes, you'll likely find well-settled powder snow in place of Friday's sun crust. Along upper elevation ridgelines and on convex features, there was blowing snow and wind-sculpting of the surface on Sunday. That said, no new avalanches were observed and the upper snowpack was found to be strong overall, despite some layers of interest and buried weak grains. Surface hoar has grown on most aspects but we’ll deal with that later if we need to. For now, its sparkly nature added to the beautiful day.

Our observations combined with continued calm weather should translate into generally safe avalanche conditions around the zone on Monday. That doesn’t mean that hazard doesn’t exist, however. A layer a few inches below the surface was found the be reactive over the weekend by multiple professionals and could result in a few small avalanches. The blowing snow mentioned above could have sifted to the base of cliffs, onto those steeper convex rollovers, or into confined chutes to form shallow Wind Slabs capable of knocking you off your feet. Don’t get surprised by one in consequential terrain and get flushed over a cliff or into a terrain trap. While we would anticipate any avalanche to be confined to the snow above the 1/27 interface, there are some deeper layers in the snowpack we have our eyes on.

Monday should dawn clear and cold again before temperatures moderate slightly and clouds increase in the afternoon hours. You may experience some gusts of chilly wind if you’re up on ridgelines. Be sure to continue to bundle up out there. If you’re thinking of taking advantage of this weather window and the relatively benign avalanche hazard to travel into more extreme terrain, be prepared to make your own observations about conditions and potential instabilities.