The snowpack is NOT improving. Avoid large open alpine terrain and overhead hazard. Choose low angled and well supported terrain. The snowpack is weak and there is the potential to trigger large avalanches from below.
If triggered the persistent slab is very likely to steep down to the deeper instability and involve the entire winter's snowpack.
This layer is easy to trigger from thin, weak shallow areas.
Isolated recent natural avalanche activity up to size 2.5 from Alpine features. These slides initiated as a persistent slab and then stepped to ground.
Large surface hoar was found today up to 2200m. This may be a layer to watch in the future.
Otherwise not much is changing in the snowpack (and that's not a good thing!). The mid-December surface hoar layer down 30cm at Treeline is reacting as a persistent slab with compression tests in the moderate range. Below this, the remainder of the snowpack is heavily facetted. Any avalanche triggered in the upper snowpack will almost certainly step down to the ground.
Forecasters are approaching all terrain conservatively and do not have much confidence in the snow pack, as it's one of the worst we've seen in many, many years.
High pressure continues, bringing mainly clear skies and no precipitation. On Wednesday temperatures will range from -15 to -10 in the Alpine with light NW winds. More of the same on Thursday.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
