Gunnison

We want to change the tune as much as you do, but the low likelihood, high consequence issues in our snowpack demand patience and careful terrain selection.   You are more likely to trigger a dangerous avalanche breaking on weak layers near the ground from a shallow spot on the slope where slabs become thinner.   Give yourself a larger margin for error than normal when assessing the snowpack and choosing terrain because our buried weak layers have been especially tricky this year.    You can also find trouble on high consequence, windloaded slopes where small wind slabs formed yesterday.  

Yesterday's storm produced up to 4" in the Northwest Mountains and about an inch in the Southeast Mountains. It's not much, but winds drifted the snow all day.  Our field teams triggered a handful of shallow windslabs on small test slopes yesterday.  This instability could pose a hazard above terrain traps or in larger, alpine features that saw more dramatic wind loading.  But don't get distracted by the mouse making all the noise in the corner of the room.  There's also a grizzly bear stirring on the couch.  That grizzly bear isn't so friendly - it represents the large and dangerous persistent slab problem.  Although avalanche activity and signs of instability have sharply declined since early last week, the threat has not disappeared.  Column tests continue to produce propagating results, indicating that weak layers near the ground still have the potential to fail suddenly and surprisingly large if you cross the wrong spot on the wrong slope.  See this video from yesterday from the Northwest Mountains and this video from earlier in the week from the Southeast Mountains. 

At the statewide scale, there have been only a few human triggered persistent slabs in the past five days and about a dozen explosive or naturally triggered persistent slabs.  Locally our last observed persistent slab activity was explosive triggered on Wednesday and naturally triggered on Tuesday.  This is a promising trend compared to the hundreds of persistent slab avalanches that failed naturally around the Crested Butte area during the first three weeks of February.  Weak layers near the ground aren't really gaining strength, but they are starting to adjust after the prolonged period of loading that started in late January and wound down a week ago.  And now they are deeper and harder to trigger.  By carefully avoiding specific types of terrain or specific terrain features, you can now navigate through avalanche country with less avalanche hazard than we have seen since late January.  However, there are landmines out there, so don't let the down-trending danger lead you to complacency in your travel habits or careful assessments of snowpack and terrain.  Those landmines are most likely to be on slopes where the snowpack has variable depths and thin spots due to wind effects and rock bands.  Below treeline slopes tend to offer the most uniform snowpacks, and troublesome slopes are becoming more isolated at that elevation.  In the shallowest parts of our forecast area, the slabs are starting to facet away again below treeline.  Near and above treeline terrain is most worrisome right now because of the variability in slab thickness introduced by winds.  There are more land mines at higher elevations and they are harder to spot without special Avalanche X-ray goggles.