East Slopes North

Shallow wind slabs may exist in isolated areas above treeline.  Cooler temperatures on Saturday will lower the chance of cornice fall.  You may find a weak and shallow snowpack in the eastern mountains.

The start of March marked a change from our cold and snowy February with milder temperatures, periods of sunshine and freezing levels rising as high 7000'.  A weather system brought increasing winds Friday along the east slopes of the Cascades including Washington Pass but very little in the way of new snow.  Only a dusting to an inch or two of snow is expected through Saturday morning.  Snow levels are expected to drop significantly overnight through Saturday.   Cooler temperatures should help decrease the chances of cornice fall over the weekend. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, cornice fall was either the confirmed or likely suspect regarding two slab avalanches that released in the Washington Pass area.  Avalanche debris from large or very large avalanches from the latter half of February is still visible in many paths. Unlike zones to the south, it appears that most of those avalanches involved more recent storm layers in the upper snowpack.

Persistent slab avalanches are unlikely but not impossible. You may encounter persistent weak layers in areas with a snowpack of five feet or less such as the eastern mountains around the tributaries of the Chewuch and Twisp River drainages. Check out this observation from Wolf Creek last week. Other forecast zones have been plagued with very large and destructive avalanches in the past 2 weeks. Be sure to check out the forecast for the East Central zone if you are traveling to the southern or eastern edge of this zone for more details on the problematic mid-January crust/facet weak layer.