Northwest Mountains

The Elk Mountains are getting walloped by powerful storms and large avalanche cycles.  A brief lull in the storm track this morning - CONSIDERABLE danger- will give way to rising danger later today.  The danger will rise to HIGH above treeline sometime around sunset, and expand to all elevations overnight as snowfall intensifies.    Avalanche conditions are dangerous.  Windward and low-angle terrain offer the safest options.  The threat of long-running natural avalanches will increase throughout the day and overnight.   Choose conservative routes with minimal overhead hazards.  

This video gives a brief snowpack history and context as to why avalanche conditions are dangerous right now.   Yesterday's blizzard brought up to 1.4" of SWE (about 12" of snow) to the Northwest Mountains, and about half that  Southeast Mountains.  Extreme alpine winds blasted the mountains with sustained speeds at 60 mph and gusting to 120.  With whiteout conditions yesterday, our avalanche observations came to a halt, but at least one destructive slide crossed a mining road in the Northern San Juans.  Surely, similar activity was going on in our backyard, we just couldn't see it. The extreme winds reduced the distribution of problematic slabs on south to west aspects while likely beefing up the size of slabs on north to east aspects.  As if they aren't fat enough.    Steep, leeward terrain should be on your "ABSOLUTELY NOT" list.  Not on. Not underneath.  With careful snowpack evaluation, you can navigate the southwest quadrant of the compass with less risk.  These aspects have seen relatively fewer avalanches in the past few days because slabs aren't as widespread from wind erosion, and because buried crust layers are a bit stronger than their adjacent aspects.  

Snowfall ramps up through the day and surges with intensity shortly after sunset.  By tomorrow morning, we could see 30" in the Paradise Divide bullseye and around 12" to 20" elsewhere.  A natural cycle is poised to unleash another round of destructive avalanches, this time with more ammo in the gun.   The peak of instability looks to occur during the overnight hours, but weather models keep pushing the heavy snowfall closer to sunset, so we're showing HIGH danger above treeline today to account for some uncertainty with the timing.  The HIGH danger expands to all elevations after sunset.  We've issued an avalanche WATCH this morning and are expecting to upgrade to a WARNING later this afternoon.  Plan accordingly if your tour or travels are extending late into the day.  We don't recommend traveling below avalanche terrain as snowfall rates intensify this evening.  That includes common road routes such as Kebler Pass, Peanut Lake, or Gothic Road.  A fresh batch of storm and wind slabs will be developing on top of our ogre of a persistent slab problem, and some slide paths are gaining enough volume to run far into their runouts.  The dense and abundant snowfalls of this month are creating conditions that aren't typical for this time of year.  Give runouts a wider margin than you might expect.