It's still a good time of year to be cautious with your movement and terrain selection.
It will be tricky to determine if and where the buried weak layer will avalanche.
The most likely place to trigger an avalanche is where fresh or old wind slabs sit on top of surface hoar.
Use extra caution below ridgecrests and in cross-loaded features. Watch for signs of instability like shooting cracks.
No new avalanches have been reported since Thursday.
Looking forward to Monday, we expect that the small bit of new snow will not change avalanche conditions. We are unsure about the potential reactivity of the buried surface hoar related to this Mountain Information Network report. A lack of avalanche reports could mean that it has bonded to the rest of the snowpack, but we require more field observations to be certain.
A bit of new snow will give a light refresh in sheltered areas around treeline and above, and moderate to strong southwest wind may be forming small pockets of wind slab on leeward slopes. This new snow covers settled snow and wind-affected surfaces.
Below treeline, rain is expected to moisten the surface snow.
On sheltered features, a surface hoar layer is buried up to 25 cm. The early November crust is buried at about 60 cm and may have small facets above it.
At treeline, the snowpack depth ranges from 60 to 80 cm, decreasing to about 30 cm at valley bottom.
Sunday Night
Cloudy. 3 to 5 mm of precipitation as snow or rain at treeline. 25-40 km/h west ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -3 °C.
Monday
Mostly cloudy. 1 to 3 mm of precipitation as snow or rain at treeline. 35-55 km/h west ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -1 °C.
Tuesday
Mostly cloudy. 1 to 3 mm of precipitation as snow or rain at treeline. 40 km/h northwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -2 °C.
Wednesday
Mostly cloudy. 2 to 3 cm of snow at treeline. 40 km/h west ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -3 °C.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
