Salt River and Wyoming Ranges

Triggering avalanches remains a possibility today. You’re most likely to trigger a slide where recent winds have added weight and compacted the snow at the surface, adding stress to the weak layers buried 1-3 feet deep. Avalanches may fail in unpredictable ways and may be triggered from below and to the sides of steeper slopes.

If you’ve been reading the forecast regularly, you’ve noticed that the avalanche danger recently dropped from considerable to moderate. You might find yourself wondering what that drop in hazard really means in such a large zone, and how to assess said hazard in areas you like to ride. This is especially the case as the obvious signs of instability like avalanches, cracking, collapsing, and unstable snow pit tests are on the decline. While your odds of triggering avalanches are slowly decreasing, that possibility is still on the table. Avalanche danger is the likelihood of an avalanche causing damage to something of value (you). You may be a bit less likely to trigger an avalanche today than yesterday, but the consequences of triggering one will be exactly the same. The best way to manage this uncertainty is to build wide safety margins into your travel decisions. Be aware of the terrain you are traveling in and underneath, and picture the consequences of being caught in a slide in that terrain. Picturing the consequences of a slide in the terrain you are in before committing to a steeper slope is a great way to bring your mind into the here and now, and disengage from complacency and biases we can all have with persistent problems. Though the dragon is quietly going to sleep, the likelihood of triggering a persistent slab ebbs and flows with periods of dry weather and any additional loading, either by new snow or increasing winds.  

Fortunately, we have the ability to use a variety of tools when tangoing with the dragon, along with a fairly robust addition of community knowledge thanks to so many observations. Continue to refresh that mental snowpack model each time you go out into the backcountry by reading observations in your zone, looking at changes in weather, and asking, "So what does this mean for where I want to travel?" The hardest part is bearing in mind that lack of evidence does not equal evidence of lack. Perhaps you are seeing other folks skiing and riding in avalanche terrain without consequences. None of these things mean that the snowpack is stable; they just mean that it is slightly more stable than it was yesterday. Keep this in mind as you travel in the backcountry today.

Additional Discussion:Winds increased yesterday and overnight, and there may be small, fresh wind slabs today in exposed terrain. These may be sensitive on their own but are also adding weight to the buried weak layer described above. 

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